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HISTORY  OF  PROTESTANT  MISSIONS 
IN  THE  NEAR  EAST 


By  JULIUS  RICHTER 

A  History  of  Missions 
in  India 

8vo,    Cloth,   net  $2.50. 
INTERESTING  COMMENDATIONS 

Missionary  Herald :  •> 

"The  literature  of  missions  is  greatly  enriched  by 
this  book.  It  is  eminently  impartial.  It  tells  the  whole 
story  of  missions  in  India  and  tells  it  with  a  fine  sense  of 
proportion.  It  is  exceedingly  informing  and  thoroughly 
comprehensive,  while  it  is  equally  compact." 

Missionary  Re'vie^w  of  the  World : 

"The  best  and  most  complete  history  in  the  English 
language,  of  the  beginnings  and  progress  of  Christian 
missions  in  the  Indian  Empire. " 

Congregationalist : 

"The  work  is  encyclopaedia  in  its  completeness,  yet 
is  written  in  a  style  that  is  refreshingly  graphic  and 
attractive. " 

Brooklyn  Eagle : 

"Overwhelmingly  interesting,  and  its  careful  perusal 
not  only  calculated  to  enable  readers  to  view  the  result  of 
much  industry  and  wide  comprehension  on  the  part  of 
the  author,  but  also  to  stimulate  the  advocates  and  sup- 
porters of  Christian  missions  in  their  relations  to  the 
Church  and  its  evangelizing  duty." 


A  HISTORY 

OF  ^~^/CA 

PROTESTANT  MISSIONS 
IN  THE  NEAR  EAST 


/    BY 

V  \ 

JULIUS  RICHTER,  D.  D. 

EDITOR   "DIE  EVANGELISCHEN   MISSIONEN," 

AUTHOR   OF   "  A   HISTORY   OF   MISSIONS   IN   INDIA,'' 

ETC.,   ETC. 


New  York        Chicago        Toronto 

Fleming    H.    Revell    Company 

London    and      Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1910,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


P  r  e  f  a  c  e 

To  the  Boards  of  the  great  Congregational  and  Pres- 
byterian Churches  of  America  I  dedicate  this  volume 
with  an  expression  of  the  deep  gratitude  which  Prot- 
estant Christendom  owes  to  them  for  their  comprehensive  and 
thorough  work  in  the  Near  East.  They  have  worked  during 
the  nineteenth  century  quietly,  with  little  recognition  from 
outside,  for  the  uplifting  and  spiritual  vitalizing  of  the  vener- 
able remnants  of  the  Oriental  Churches.  Now  after  the 
sudden  changes  of  the  last  year,  those  missions  stand  out  as 
the  well  founded  corner-stones  of  great  and  promising  mission 
churches,  as  the  pillars  of  hope  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  of 
the  Near  East. 

I  have  had  the  privilege  during  the  last  month  to  be  for  the 
first  time  in  the  United  States,  at  the  fountainhead  of  those 
beneficent  streams  which  are  fertilizing  the  dry  fields  of  the 
Levant.  What  I  have  experienced  during  this  time  has  filled 
my  heart  with  great  hopes  for  the  future  of  the  missionary 
movement.  When  at  the  International  Convention  at  Koch- 
ester  I  looked  into  the  bright  faces  of  about  four  thousand 
students,  kindled  with  enthusiasm  for  missions,  I  realized  that 
the  central  question  of  the  labourers  in  the  great  harvest  here 
finds  an  ideal  solution.  When  I  came  in  close  touch  with  The 
Laymen's  Missionary  Movement,  I  ventured  to  hope  that  by 
reclaiming  the  wealth  of  the  Union  for  the  service  of  the  King- 
dom that  other  perplexing  problem,  the  money  question,  would 
be  dealt  with  satisfactorily.  And  when  in  constant  intercourse 
with  the  leaders  interested  in  missionary  movements  I  saw  of 
what  high  type  these  men  really  are,  my  confidence  increased 
that  the  leadership,  too,  is  in  good  hands  and  that  by  such 
men  God  has  a  great  work  waiting  for  America. 

This  book  in  English  is  not  a  mere  translation  of  the  Ger- 
man edition.     Whole  chapters  have  been  rewritten,  others 

6 


6  Preface 

more  or  less  altered.  English  and  American  views  on  mis- 
sionary questions  differ  greatly  from  the  German.  The  writer 
of  history  has  a  task  like  that  of  an  oculist  who  adapts  the 
spectacles  exactly  to  the  eye  so  that  men  may  see  matters 
clearly  and  distinctly  in  their  right  proportions.  A  historian 
tries  to  do  the  same  for  his  readers ;  to  present  the  facts  in  just 
that  form  which  enables  them  to  be  seen  in  their  true  perspec- 
tive and  significance.  In  translating  this  book  into  English  I 
had  the  joy  of  a  man  privileged  to  show  to  the  members  of  his 
household  a  hidden  treasure  belonging  to  them,  the  great  value 
and  beauty  of  which  they  had  not  hitherto  known. 

I  am  deeply  indebted  to  the  Rev.  John  Elliot  of  Priors 
Marston,  England,  and  to  the  Rev.  Murray  Scott  Frame  of 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York,  for  their  untiring 
zeal  in  revising  the  book.  I  gratefully  acknowledge  the  help 
of  both,  for  they  spared  no  pains  in  bringing  out  the  book  in 
as  correct  a  form  as  possible. 

We  are  on  the  eve  of  great  events  in  the  Near  East.  The 
problem  gains  in  importance  and  urgency  year  by  year.  Those 
facts  become  suggestive  which  show  that  the  American  missions 
have  been  more  effective  in  their  Muhammadan  work  than 
generally  known.  I  have  just  received  a  letter  from  the  Rev. 
C.  R.  Watson,  D.  D.,  Foreign  Secretary  of  the  United  Presby- 
terian Church  in  America,  proving  convincingly  to  what  extent 
the  American  Mission  in  Egypt  has  worked  among  the  Mu- 
hammadans.  There  are  3,945  pupils  in  its  schools,  more  than 
10,000  patients  treated  every  year  in  its  hospitals  and  139  con- 
verts have  been  gathered  in,  an  earnest  of  a  greater  future 
harvest.  May  this  book,  too,  increase  the  Christian  and  mis- 
sionary interest  in  the  Muhammadan  world  and  may  it,  by 
giving  an  accurate  record  of  what  has  been  done  up  to  the 
present  time,  make  many  Christians  willing  to  enlarge  these 
missions  for  greater  work  in  the  future. 

Julius  Richteb. 
New  York.     On  the  day  of  departure 
from  the  United  States. 


Contents 

Introduction ii 

I.  The  MuHAMMADAN  World  AND  THE  Eastern  Churches  17 

1.  The  Muhammadan  World        .         .         .         .17 

2.  Two  Aspects  of  Islam       .         .         .        ,         .21 

3.  The  Oriental  Churches 36 

4.  The  Roman  Propaganda           ....  46 

5.  The  Russian  Church 56 

6.  The  Position  of  Christians  Under  Turkish  Rule  58 

7.  What  is  the  Justification  of  Protestant  Missions 

Among  the  Oriental  Christian  Churches  ?    .  66 

8.  Has  the  Time  Come  for  Muhammadan  Missions 

in  the  Near  East  ? ^6 

9.  The  Message  of  Christianity  to  Islam        .  80 

II.  The    Beginnings    of   Protestant  Missionary  En- 

deavour       89 

1.  Peter  Heyling 91 

2.  Henry  Martyn 93 

3.  The  "  Mediterranean   Mission  "  of  the  Church 

Missionary  Society 94 

4.  The  Basle  Mission  in  Transcaucasia,  1 822-1835  97 

III.  Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia         .  104 

1.  The  Mission  of  the  American  Board  Until  the 

Rupturewith  the  Ancient  Church,  1830-1846  106 

2.  From  the  Organization  of  the  Protestant  Church 

in  iSsoUntiltheArmenian  Massacres  in  1895  113 

3.  The  Armenian  Massacres,  1 894-1 896       .         .135 

4.  Russian  Armenia I53 

5.  The   Work    of    the    American    Board    from 

1896  to  1907 155 

7 


8  Contents 

6.  Protestant   Missions  Among  the  Greeks, 

the  Bulgarians  andthe  Turks  .         .     164 

7.  The  New  Era  in  Turkey  ....     176 

IV.  Syria  and  Palestine 181 

(A)  Syria 181 

1.  The     Mission    of    the    American  Board, 

1823-1870  .....         185 

2.  The   Entrance  of    the  Other   Missionary- 

Societies         ......     201 

3.  The    Mission    of   the   American    Presby- 

terians, 1 870- 1908  .         .         .         .212 

(B)  Palestine 229 

1.  The  Beginnings   of  Protestant  Missionary 

Work :     Anglo-Prussian    Episcopate  of 
Jerusalem     ......       235 

2.  The   Mission   of  the  Church   Missionary 

Society  ......     242 

3.  German  Missionary  Work  in  the  Holy  Land     258 

4.  Protestant  Outposts  in  Arabia  .         .         .271 

V.  Persia 279 

1.  Protestant  Missions  in  Persia.     The  Work 

of  the  American  Board,  1834-1870         .     294 

2.  The     American       Presbyterian      Mission 

Among  the  Nestorians,  1 870-1908         .     303 

3.  Missionary  Competition     ....     308 

4.  American  Presbyterian  Missions  in  Persia, 

Exclusive   of  the    Mission  Among  the 
Nestorians 317 

5.  The  Work  of  the  Church  Missionary  So- 

ciety in  Persia        .         .         •         .         .     329 

VI.  Egypt  and  Abyssinia 337 

{A)  Egypt 337 

1.  The  American  Mission      ....     344 

2.  Spittler's      "  Apostelstrasse "      (Apostles' 

Road)  and  Other  Smaller  Missions  .     354 


Contents  9 

3.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  in 

Egypt 358 

4.  The  Egyptian  Sudan          .         .         .         .     363 
(B)  Abyssinia 37 1 

1.  The    Church    Missionary  Society    Mission 

from  1830  to  1843  .         .         .         .378 

2.  The  Second  Period — The  Falasha  Mission  .     382 

3.  The  Swedish  National  Mission    .         .         .     386 

VII.  Missions  Among  the  Jews.      The  Work  of  the 

Bible  Societies 39 1 

(^A)  Missions  Among  the  Jews      .         .         .         .391 
(B)   The  Work  of  the  Bible  Societies     .         .         .     400 

VIII.  Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables       .        .        .412 
Index 423 


Introduction 

THE  "  Near  East  "  of  this  book  comprises  the  Balkan 
Peninsula,  the  Levant  with  Armenia  and  Persia,  and 
Northeastern  Africa.  Some  of  our  readers  may- 
question  the  accuracy  of  our  use  of  the  term  "  Protestant  Mis- 
sions." It  may  seem  to  them  that  these  words  ought  to  be  used 
exclusively  to  denote  Protestant  missionary  activity  among 
non-Christians,  whereas  only  a  small  part  of  the  grand  efforts, 
with  the  history  of  which  this  book  is  concerned,  have  been 
directed  towards  the  non-Christian  population  of  the  Near 
East.  Yet  we  have  no  word  exactly  expressing  what  we  want 
to  say,  and  the  word  "  mission  "  has  been  widely  and  gener- 
ally used  in  connection  with  the  evangelistic  and  educational 
efforts  to  enlighten  and  revivify  the  old  and  venerable,  but 
deplorably  decaying  Churches  of  the  East.  So  we  feel  there 
will  be  no  misunderstanding  if,  in  this  book,  we  use  the  term 
so  dear  to  our  hearts  to  describe  all  efforts  to  evangelize  the 
Near  East.  Most  of  this  history  is  a  narrative  of  admirable 
undertakings  to  help  on,  and  to  bring  to  a  higher  level  of 
spiritual  life,  the  ancient  Eastern  Churches.  Yet  throughout 
this  wide  area  evangelistic  efforts  among  Christians  are  up  to 
the  present  time  the  most  important  and  comprehensive 
method  of  preparation  for  work  among  non-Christians.  And 
we  are  convinced  that  in  the  near  future  greater  interest  will 
be  taken  in  the  hitherto  isolated  missionary  efforts  on  behalf 
of  the  Muhammadans. 

Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East  have,  during  the  last 
century,  found  scant  attention  among  the  larger  Christian 
public.  This  may  be  due  partly  to  the  fact  that  missionary 
writers  regarded  this  work  as  not  properly  within  their  sphere, 
whilst  church  historians,  even  such  as  were  specially  interested 
in  the  Eastern  Churches,  either  had  no  access  to  the  sources 

zi 


1 2  Introduction 

needed  for  the  compilation  of  a  history,  or  were  unable  to 
thread  their  way  through  the  labyrinth  of  material.  An  ex- 
tensive and  important  chapter  of  modern  church  history  con- 
sequently remained  almost  unknown ;  or,  if  writers  of  earnest 
purpose  ventured  into  this  region,  where  everything  was 
shrouded  in  obscurity,  they  led  their  readers  astray  by  erro- 
neous and  mistaken  statements.  Only  one  who  is  fairly  con- 
versant with  missionary  literature  is  in  a  position  to  follow 
the  tangled  threads  of  such  a  complicated  development  of 
events,  and  even  such  an  one  will  find  that  his  powers  are 
limited.  We  present  the  following  studies  to  our  readers  only 
as  an  imperfect  sketch.  At  the  present  time,  owing  to  the 
lack  of  previous  work  in  this  field,  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
offer  anything  complete.  May  the  following  pages  serve 
some  later  historian  as  a  stepping-stone  to  a  more  comprehen- 
sive and  discriminating  survey. 

Even  this  fragmentary  account  will  show  what  an  impor- 
tant and  deeply  interesting  chapter  of  mission  history  it  is 
with  which  we  have  to  do.  By  the  Koman  Catholics  a  lively 
interest  has  long  been  taken  in  church  propagation  in  the 
East,  and  this  interest  is  fostered  by  means  of  missionary  period- 
icals, such  as  Die  Katholischen  Ifissionen  and  also  by  means 
of  magazines  dealing  exclusively  with  this  field.^  We  regret 
that  Protestants,  on  the  contrary,  except  perhaps  as  regards 
the  Holy  Land,  have  generally  failed  to  perceive  the  impor- 
tance and  extent  of  the  work  carried  on  by  their  co-religion- 
ists in  these  lands.  Their  interest  has  not  been  aroused  even 
by  the  fact  that  the  Turkish  Empire,  with  its  neighbouring 
provinces,  has  been  brought  into  such  close  connection  with 
Europe  by  the  political  developments  of  the  past  decades. 

How  many  are  the  claims  of  those  desolated  lands  on  our 
sympathy  !  Scientific  research  has  for  generations  been  in- 
tensely alive  to  the  surprising  discoveries  which  their  forlorn 

^  Such  periodicals  dealing  with  the  Roman  Catholic  Missions  in  the  East  are 
the  following:  in  Italy,  Bessarione  (since  March,  1896)  ;  in  France,  Remie  de 
V Orient  Chretien;  in  Germany,  Nillea,  Calendarium  ecdesise  utriuaque  {InusbTxiok, 
1896). 


Introduction 


13 


tumuli  yield  every  year  to  the  archaeologist.  The  gigantic 
old  palaces  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon  have  been  dug  out  and 
have  revealed  to  our  astonished  eyes  an  admirable  culture  of 
almost  prehistoric  times.  The  graves  and  ruins  of  Egypt  have 
begun  to  speak  again  of  the  ancient  glory  of  the  realm  of  the 
Pharaohs  and  its  indigenous,  Nile-born  civilization.  Even  the 
old  capitals  of  almost  forgotten  kingdoms,  like  the  Hittites 
of  the  Bible,  have  been  discovered  and  unearthed  again.  A 
man  who  showed  no  interest  in  these  wonderful  monuments 
of  a  remote  antiquity  would  be  regarded  as  deplorably  short- 
sighted. But  in  these  regions  there  are  living  ruins  too,  living 
ruins  that  have  a  special  claim  on  our  sympathy  and  help. 

Our  studies  lead  us  to  the  lands  of  the  Bible,  lands  conse- 
crated by  the  most  sacred  associations  with  the  mighty  works 
of  God.  These  are  the  lands  in  which  the  all-wise  Disposer 
of  the  destinies  of  mankind  worked  out  on  the  stage  of  history 
the  redemption  of  the  human  race  ;  the  lands  where  the 
Chosen  People  heard  the  call  of  God,  where  they  wandered, 
suffered  and  perished  ;  where  the  Only  Begotten  Son  of  God 
sojourned  in  the  days  of  His  flesh  and  accomplished  on  the 
cross  the  redemption  of  the  world  ;  where  the  great  Apostle 
of  the  Gentiles  laid  the  foundations  of  the  Christian  Church. 
There  the  primary  developments  in  the  history  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  took  place.  There  the  martyrs  sealed  their  testi- 
mony with  blood.  There  the  most  celebrated  church  fathers 
clothed  the  facts  of  the  Christian  plan  of  salvation  in  the 
modes  of  thought  of  Greek  philosophy  and  culture,  thereby 
exercising  a  decisive  influence  upon  the  development  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine.  There  the  growth  of  early  Christianity  was 
marked  by  the  rise  of  church  buildings  and  the  introduction 
of  liturgical  forms,  the  development  of  church  organization 
and  church  practice.  There  for  the  first  time  Christian 
national  Churches  took  their  rise  and  became  prosperous. 

The  most  severe  blow  sustained  by  the  Church  of  Christ 
throughout  the  whole  course  of  her  history  was  that  which 
was  struck  in  the  year  632,  when  the  Arab  invasion  swept  like 
a  devastating  flood  over  the  Eastern  provinces  of  the  Church. 


14  Introduction 

The  century  which  followed  was  the  most  disastrous  in  the 
history  of  the  Church.  More  than  half  the  territory  then 
nominally  Christian  was  brought  under  the  sway  of  the  Cres- 
cent. It  is  a  reproach  to  Christian  nations  that  the  rest  of 
the  Church  looked  on  for  seven  centuries  with  short-sighted 
indolence,  whilst  the  Eastern  Roman  Empire  was  being  sub- 
merged beneath  successive  waves  of  invasion,  until  the  year 
1453  witnessed  the  fall  of  Constantinople  itself. 

Once,  throughout  a  period  of  nearly  two  hundred  years,  the 
nations  of  Christendom  strove  to  recover  at  least  one  dearly 
loved  province,  the  Holy  Land,  from  the  hands  of  the  fanat- 
ical Muhammadaus.  The  time  of  the  Crusades  is  the  most 
romantic  period  of  the  Middle  Ages;  in  spite  of  all  their 
political  folly  and  petty  rivalry,  they  constituted  a  grand  effort 
on  the  part  of  Christendom  to  win  back  the  countries  of  her 
birth.  The  effort  failed ;  the  wave  of  enthusiasm  was  beaten 
back  by  the  brazen  walls  of  Muhammadan  fanaticism. 

Since  then  Christendom  has  made  a  second  attempt  to  win 
back  the  lost  provinces ;  not  by  mail-clad  knights  or  death- 
dealing  cannon,  but,  just  as  in  the  day  when  the  Christian 
Church  was  founded  in  those  regions,  by  the  gentle  influences 
which  emanate  from  the  preaching  of  the  Cross.  She  estab- 
lished churches,  schools  and  hospitals.  She  sent  missionaries, 
who  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Him  who  did  not  break  the 
bruised  reed  nor  quench  the  smoking  flax.  Though  this 
work,  like  the  Master  Himself,  does  not  make  its  voice  heard 
in  the  streets,  our  Lord's  disciples,  at  any  rate,  should  have 
their  eyes  opened  to  discern  its  hidden  glory.  The  following 
pages  contain  the  history  of  these  efforts  put  forth  to  recover 
the  provinces  wrested  by  Islam  from  the  Church,  this  modern 
crusade,  which  breathes  more  truly  than  that  old-time  war- 
fare the  spirit  of  the  Prince  of  Peace. 

The  course  of  our  book  is  dictated  by  the  nature  of  the  sub- 
ject. We  shall  endeavour,  first  of  all,  to  gain  a  general  idea 
of  the  religious  and  social  condition  of  this  vast  region,  direct- 
ing our  attention  to  the  Muhammadan  world  and  to  the 
remnants  of  the  ancient  Christian  Churches.    We  shall  then 


Introduction  15 

take  up  the  different  countries  one  by  one,  and  survey  the 
missionary  efforts  put  forth  in  each.  With  the  Komish  prop- 
aganda we  deal  only  in  so  far  as  this  is  necessary  to  a  right 
understanding  of  Protestant  work.  We  do  not  attempt  to 
describe  the  spiritual  life,  the  constitution,  the  liturgies,  and  the 
checkered  history  of  the  Eastern  Churches.  Nor  do  we  deal 
with  the  history  of  the  religious  controversy  between  Mu- 
hammadans  and  Christians,  It  seems  to  us  better  to  direct 
our  attention  solely  to  the  wide-spread  ramifications  of  the 
Protestant  missionary  enterprise. 

May  this  plain,  unvarnished  tale  open  the  eyes  and  warm 
the  heart  of  many  a  Protestant  Christian.  True,  we  do  not 
record  events  which  have  moved  the  world.  We  still  live  in 
a  day  of  small  things.  But  as  we  traverse  those  consecrated 
lands,  we  are  reminded  afresh  that  it  was  here  that  God 
worked  out  the  redemption  of  the  world.  Cannot  He,  who 
once  caused  the  river  of  salvation  to  flow  forth  from  these 
lands  into  all  the  world,  cannot  He  bring  back  to  these  re- 
gions some  currents  from  that  stream  of  blessing,  which  has 
enriched  Europe  and  America  ?  In  these  regions  Christianity 
once  showed  its  power,  when  opposed  by  the  civilized  heathen- 
ism of  the  Greek-Roman  world ;  should  not  the  same  power 
approve  itself  a  second  time  as  "  the  victory  that  overcometh 
the  world "  ?  Protestants  have  carried  the  Gospel  far  and 
wide  throughout  the  world ;  they  have  given  heed  to  the 
command,  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel 
to  every  creature."  But  on  Mount  Olivet  the  Master,  as  He 
was  about  to  leave  this  earth,  issued  His  instruction,  "  And 
ye  shall  be  witnesses  unto  Me  both  in  Jerusalem  and  in  all 
Judea  and  in  Samaria  and  unto  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth." 
The  Muhammadan  lands  of  the  East  lie  at  the  very  door  of 
Christendom ;  a  journey  of  two  and  a  half  days  takes  us  to 
Constantinople ;  in  seven  to  nine  days  we  can  reach  Jerusalem 
or  Cairo.  At  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  if  Christians 
desired  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  nations  of  Africa 
and  Asia,  it  was  necessary  cautiously  to  traverse  the  interve- 
ning fringe  of  Muhammadan  territory,  or  to  make  one's  way 


i6  Introduction 

around  it.  The  route  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  has  been 
exchanged  for  the  more  direct  route  through  Muhammadan 
lands,  where  the  traveller  can  now  pass  in  safety.  The  in- 
habitants of  these  countries  have  the  right  to  ask  of  Christian 
missionaries  no  longer  to  pass  them  by  through  disregard  or 
hopelessness. 


History  of  Protestant 
Missions  in  the  Near  East 


THE  MUHAMMADAN  WORLD  AND  THE  EASTERN 
CHURCHES 

1.     The  Muhammadan   World 

ONLY  a  part  of  the  Muhammadan  world  can  claim 
our  attention  in  the  following  pages.  We  shall  con- 
sider Turkey,  Persia,  Arabia,  and  Egypt.  These  are 
the  lands  in  which  Muhammadanism  took  its  rise.  They  are 
at  the  same  time  the  home  of  more  or  less  important  remnants 
of  ancient  Christian  Churches.  Yet,  in  order  to  appreciate  the 
position  which  these  nations  occupy  in  relation  to  the 
Muhammandan  peoples  as  a  whole,  we  must  cast  at  least  a 
rapid  glance  over  the  entire  region  occupied  by  the  followers 
of  the  Prophet. 

The  Muhammadan  world  is  a  broad  strip  of  territory,  ex. 
tending  from  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean  to  the  Dutch 
East  Indies,  and  far  into  the  interior  of  China.  On  the  north 
the  boundary  line  of  this  wide  region  passes  from  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar  through  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Balkan 
Peninsula,  runs  northward  to  the  Danube  and  stretches  east- 
ward across  the  steppes  of  Southern  Kussia  and  Siberia  into 
China.  In  China  the  western  provinces  of  Kan-su,  Shen-si, 
Yun-nan  and  the  new  province  of  Hsin-kiang,  have  a  large 
admixture  of  Muhammad ans  ;  the  further  east  one  travels,  the 
smaller  is  the  proportion  of  the  Muhammadan  population.    In 

17 


l8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Africa,  the  Muhammadan  countries  in  Western  and  Central 
Sudan  extend  into  the  interior  of  Guinea,  in  fact  almost  as 
far  south  as  the  Congo ;  to  the  east,  in  spite  of  the  paramount 
influence  of  Muhammadan  Egypt,  they  have  not  advanced 
south  of  the  latitude  of  Fashoda,  except  along  the  coast. 
Along  the  east  coast  of  Africa  Arab  immigrants  have  formed 
a  new  centre  of  Muhammadan  influence,  which  has  extended 
westward  even  beyond  the  great  inland  lakes.  In  Southern 
Asia  we  find  that  in  a  large  part  of  India,  especially  in  the 
northern  provinces,  in  the  United  Provinces,  and  in  Bengal, 
the  Muhammadans  form  no  inconsiderable  proportion  of  the 
population,  numbering  many  millions  of  adherents.  In  the 
Dutch  East  Indies  they  have  taken  entire  possession  of  Java, 
the  most  beautiful  and  most  thickly  populated  of  the  islands. 
They  are  very  strong  in  the  other  large  islands  of  Sumatra, 
Celebes,  and  Borneo,  and  have  gained  a  footing  on  the  remotest 
islands  of  the  group.  In  addition  to  this  wide  belt  in  which 
Islam  is  almost  without  rival,  isolated  outposts  are  to  be  found 
at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  on  some  of  the  islands  off  the 
East  African  coast. 

Authorities  still  differ  considerably  as  to  how  many  Mu- 
hammadans are  to  be  found  in  these  countries.  The  reason  is 
not  far  to  seek.  Only  in  the  case  of  such  territories  as  are 
under  the  dominion  of  Christian  powers  do  we  possess  reliable 
statistics,  obtained  through  an  accurate  census.  Thus  we 
know  that  in  British  India  there  are  62,458,077  Muhammadans, 
m  Egypt,  8,978,775,  in  Cape  Colony,  15,100,  in  Cyprus,  47,900, 
in  Ceylon,  212,000.  But  with  regard  to  very  large  tracts  of 
territory  we  possess  only  approximate  estimates.  So  the  most 
careful  statisticians  differ  considerably  in  their  results ;  the 
French  geographer  Malte  Brun  reckoned  in  1810  and  again  in 
1831  only  110  millions.  "  Brockhaus  Konversationslexikon," 
1894, 175  millions.  On  the  other  hand,  "  Brockhaus  Konversa- 
tionslexikon," 1902  (14th  Ed.,  Vol.  VI),  244  millions.  The 
Wurtemburg  statistician.  Director  H.  Zeller  {Allgemeine 
Missions- Zeitschr  if t,  1903),  175,330,000.  Hubert  Jansen, 
"  Verbreitung  des  Islam,"  1897, 259,680,672  (!}.    H.  Wichmana 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches     19 

in  Justus  Perthes'  Atlas,  1903,  240  millions.     "  The  Moham- 
medan World  of  To-day,"  1906,  232,966,170.^ 

Of  these  228  millions  of  Muhammadans,  taking  that  figure 

>  We  append  herewith  the  most  important  of  the  separate  items,  so  that  the 
reader  may  form  his  own  estimate  of  the  accuracy  of  the  total.  We  print  in 
italics  the  names  of  those  countries  for  which  the  figures  may  be  considered  fairly 
correct,  because  derived  from  an  oflScial  census  : — 

Europe:   Turkey,  2,050,000 ;  Bosnia,  549,000;  Bulgaria,  643,000; 
Boumania,  44,000 ;  Servia,  14,000. 

Total 3,300,000 

Africa:   l^ioTih— Egypt,    8,979,000;    Tripoli,    1,250,000;    Tunis, 
1,700,000;  Algeria,  4,071,000;  Morocco,  5,600,000. 

Total 21,600,000 

Central  and  East— Erythrea,  150,000;  Somaliland. 
1,100,000 ;  British  and  German  East  Africa,  1,250,000; 
Egyptian  Sudan,  1,000,000;  Abyssinia,  300,000. 

Total 3,800,000 

West— French  West  Africa,  20,000,000  ;  British  Africa, 
7,500,000;  German  West  Africa,  2,000,000;  other 
countries,  1,000,000. 

Total 30,500,000 

Congo,  2,000,000;  French  Congo,  1,000,000;  other 
countries  and  islands,  750,000. 

Total 3,750,000 

Total  in  Africa 59,650,000 

Asia  :  North  and  West— Turkey,  12,250,000  ;  Independent 
Arabia,  3,500,000;  Persia,  8,750,000;  Afghanistan, 
4,500,000 ;  Russian  Asia,  6,500,000 ;  Bokhara  and 
Khiva,  2,000,000. 

Total 37,500,000 

^OViih— British  India,  62,bQ0,000;  Ceylon,  Malay  Peninsula 
and  other  British  possessions,  900,000. 

Total 63,400,000 

Butch  East  Indies,  29,250,000  ;  French  colonies  in  Hither 
and  Further  India,  1,500,000;  Siam,  1,000,000. 

Total 31,750,000 

Central— China,  30,000,000.  30,000,000 

Total  in  Asia 162,650,000 

Asia 162,650,000 

Africa 59,650,000 

Europe 3,300,000 

Total 225,600,000 

If  the  usual  estimate  of  thirty  millions  of  Muhammadans  in  China  is  not 
thought  to  be  considerably  too  high,  we  may  reckon  that  in  round  figures  there 
is  a  Muhammadan  population  in  the  world  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-five 
millions. 


20      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

as  an  approximate  total,  only  thirty-eight  millions,^  or 
about  one-sixth,  live  in  those  parts  of  Asia  and  the  north- 
east corner  of  Africa  which,  in  this  book,  occupy  our  attention. 
But  these  regions  include  within  their  borders  the  countries  in 
which  Islam  took  its  rise,  and  they  embrace  its  holiest  cities 
and  its  most  celebrated  universities  ;  in  a  word,  they  contain, 
as  it  were,  the  heart  and  head  of  Muhammadanisra.  One  of 
the  chief  duties  of  the  orthodox  Moslem  is  the  "  hadj "  or 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  which  every  Mussulman  is  expected  to 
perform  at  least  once  in  his  life.  This  pilgrimage  brings 
Muhammadans  from  the  remotest  countries  of  the  earth  to 
Mecca,  whence  a  flood  of  Moslem  piety  flows  back  into  all 
parts  of  the  Muhammadan  world.  Besides  this,  Arabic  is  the 
sacred  language  of  Islam.  Only  in  that  language  is  it  per- 
missible to  read  the  Koran  and  to  pray.  It  is  in  Arabic  alone 
that  Muhammadan  theological  and  philosophical  works,  in 
short,  original  Muhammadan  works  of  learning,  have  been 
written.  Consequently,  the  Arabic-speaking  countries  of 
Hither-Asia  and  North  Africa  claim  as  their  birthright  a 
position  of  preeminence  with  regard  to  the  other  Muhammadan 
countries  of  the  world.  In  addition  to  this.  Church  and  State 
are  so  indissolubly  connected  in  the  Muhammadan  world  that 
a  certain  amount  of  prestige  attaches  to  the  holder  of  the 
highest  temporal  office,  the  lawful  Khalif,  that  is,  the  Turkish 
Sultan  in  Stamboul.  In  him  centre  the  ambitious  political 
aspirations  of  the  Moslem  world.  Thus,  in  spite  of  their 
comparatively  small  population,  a  unique  position  in  the 
Muhammadan  world  is  occupied  by  the  lands  which  con- 
tain Mecca  and  Stamboul,  in  which  Medina  and  Jerusa- 
lem, the  next  holiest  cities  of  the  Moslems,  are  situated, 
and  where  Arabic  is  spoken  as  the  mother  tongue  of  the 
inhabitants. 

'  Europe  according  to  the  note  on  page  19,  3,300,000  ;  Asia  Minor,  7,179,000  ; 
Armenia  and  Kurdistan,  1,795,000;  Mesopotamia,  1,200,000;  Syria,  1,053,100; 
Turkish  Arabia,  1,000,000.  Independent  Arabia,  3,500,000;  Persia,  8,750,000; 
Egypt,  8,979,000;  Egyptian  Sudan,  1,000,000;  Abyssinia,  300,000;  Erythrea, 
152,000.     Total,  38,600,000. 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    21 

'2.  Two  Aspects  of  Islam 
Muhammadanism  shows  evident  signs  of  decay ;  on  the  other 
hand,  there  are  less  evident  signs  of  progress.  Islam,  which 
was  founded  by  the  sword,  and  the  early  adherents  of  which 
were  desirous  of  proving  its  truth  by  the  sword,  has  through 
many  a  long  year  experienced  a  succession  of  reverses.  These 
began  in  Western  Europe.  Since  the  victory  of  Charles 
Martel  at  Poictiers  the  flood  of  Muhammadanism  has  receded ; 
one  part  of  Spain  after  the  other.  Lower  Italy,  Sicily,  Sardinia, 
Corsica,  and  the  Balearic  Isles,  were  freed  from  the  yoke  of 
Islam.  It  was  a  hard  struggle,  lasting  several  centuries. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  greater  part 
of  Eastern  Europe  was  under  Muhammadan  sway.  But  then 
came  a  reaction.  The  Russians  fought  against  the  Moslems, 
and  in  the  course  of  the  struggle,  which  lasted  some  hundreds 
of  years,  they  became  experts  in  the  art  of  war  and  in  the 
subtleties  of  diplomacy.  The  absorption  by  Russia  of  terri- 
tories that  were  formerly  Muhammadan  continued  throughout 
the  nineteenth  century.  Thus  in  1800  Georgia,  and  in  1828, 
1829,  and  1878,  parts  of  Armenia  were  annexed,  while  from 
1844  to  1887  the  Trans-Caspian  territory  and  Turkestan,  the 
ancestral  homes  of  the  Turks  in  Asia,  were  subjugated.  A 
third  series  of  Muhammadan  reverses  dates  from  1683,  when 
John  Sobieski  raised  the  siege  of  Vienna.  The  Austrians 
gradually  gaining  courage,  after  struggles  that  lasted  several 
decades,  succeeded  in  driving  the  Turks  back  from  the  Leitha 
across  the  Danube,  and  regained  possession  of  Hungary. 
Throughout  the  nineteenth  century  a  fourth  movement  has 
taken  place,  whereby  the  power  of  Islam  has  been  still  further 
curtailed.  The  "  Sick  Man  on  the  Bosphorus  "  has  had  to  suffer 
the  amputation  of  one  limb  of  his  unwieldy  body  after  the 
other.  Provinces  have  either  been  ma'de  into  independent 
kingdoms,  or  have  been  placed  under  the  protection  of 
European  Powers.  Thus  in  1829  the  Turkish  Empire  lost 
Greece  and  Servia,  in  1830  Algeria,  in  1858  Roumania,  in 
1878  Cyprus,  Bosnia,  Herzegovina,  Montenegro  and  Bulgaria, 
in  1882  Egypt  and  Tunis,  and  in  1898  the  island  of  Crete. 


22      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Turkey  is  only  a  comparatively  small  part  of  the  region 
under  Muhamraadan  rule.  "What  else  remains  to-day  of  the 
former  realm  of  Islam  ?  There  was  a  time  when  the  Sudan, 
the  Fulbe  and  Hausa  States  of  West  Africa,  Zanzibar  and  the 
whole  of  East  Africa  as  far  as  the  Lakes,  in  fact  as  far  as  the 
Upper  Congo,  were  ruled  by  Muhammadan  princes.  To-day 
the  three  Christian  Powers  of  France,  Britain,  and  Germany 
have  divided  these  territories  between  them.  There  was  a 
time  when  India  from  the  Himalayas  to  Cape  Cormorin  was 
governed  by  the  Great  Moguls  in  Delhi  and  their  vassals  ; 
but  years  ago  the  last  maharajah  bowed  his  proud  neck  before 
Christian  Britain.  There  was  a  time  when  the  Muhamma- 
dans  were  masters  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  adjacent  seas, 
as  well  as  of  the  Ked  Sea  and  the  Indian  Ocean.  To-day 
Britain  is  mistress  of  these  seas,  and  the  converging  points  of 
the  trade  routes  which  cross  their  waters  are  under  her  con- 
trol. Gibraltar,  Malta,  Aden,  Perim,  Penang  and  Singapore 
are  important  connecting  links  of  the  British  Empire. 

Of  the  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  millions  of  Muham- 
madans  only  thirty-five  millions  are  at  present  under  Moslem 
rule,  while  one  hundred  and  sixty  millions  are  under  Christian 
rule.  Whereas  the  Sultan,  the  "  Commander  of  the  Faithful," 
Muhammad's  Khalif,  rules  over  about  eighteen  million  Mu- 
hammadans,  the  Christian  King  of  England  commands  eighty 
millions,  the  French  Kepublic  and  Holland  each  twenty-nine 
millions  and  the  Kussian  Czar  fourteen  millions. 

It  was  disastrous  for  Islam  that  from  the  twelfth  century 
the  Turks  assumed  the  leadership.  From  one  point  of  view 
this  was  an  advantage.  Through  the  centuries  of  their  world 
empire  the  Arabs  have  never  lost  their  Bedouin  characteristics. 
They  never  learned  statecraft.  Their  history  is  a  record  of 
ambitious  cliques  and  reckless  adventurers.  The  Turks,  on 
the  contrary,  are  a  people  with  a  capacity  for  rule.  By  nature 
excellent  soldiers,  they  founded  a  lasting  government.  But 
they  do  not  take  kindly  to  civilization.  There  are  four 
great  nationalities  which  have  played  a  leading  part  in  the 
internal  and  external  history  of  Islam ;  the  Arabs,  the  Per- 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches     23 

sians,  the  Mongols  and  the  Turks.  The  first  three  introduced 
splendid  epochs  of  civilization  and  stood,  at  various  times,  in 
the  forefront  of  general  culture — the  Arabs  in  Egypt,  Morocco 
and  Spain ;  the  Persians  in  their  own  country ;  and  the 
Mongols  in  India.  They  achieved  great  things  in  architecture, 
philosophy,  geography,  and  astronomy.  They  produced  poets 
and  religious  thinkers  of  world-wide  renown.  Nothing  of  all 
this  is  to  be  found  among  the  Turks,  no  truly  great  poet,  no 
explorer  of  the  unknown,  no  fruitful  constructive  ideas  in  art. 
They  rule  with  the  mailed  fist,  and  their  rule  is  a  curse  for  the 
peoples  subject  to  them.  Under  their  rule  are  found  repre- 
sentatives of  more  gifted  nations — Greeks,  Egyptians,  Mace- 
donians, Armenians.  As  long  as  these  languish  under  the 
Turkish  yoke,  they  deteriorate  outwardly  and  inwardly.  Freed 
from  Turkish  tyranny,  they  recover.  Think  what  Greece,  Bul- 
garia, Servia,  Cyprus,  and  Egypt  have  become  since  their  lib- 
eration, and  you  realize  the  curse  of  Turkish  rule.  In  the 
whole  range  of  history,  you  will  hardly  find  a  nation  that  has 
done  so  little  for  civilization  after  seven  centuries  of  unrivalled 
opportunity.  That  Islam  to-day  is  generally  regarded  as  an- 
tagonistic to  culture,  is  to  be  attributed,  above  all,  to  the 
Turks. 

There  are  five  chief  causes  of  decay  in  Islam. 

(1)  Muhammadan  governments  have  proved  incapable  of 
developing  the  economical  resources  of  their  lands  and  of 
helping  the  population  of  these  lands  to  thrive.  Turkey, 
Persia  and  Morocco,  almost  the  only  countries  still  governed 
by  Muhammadans,  are  in  a  condition  of  economical  chaos. 
On  the  Balkan  Peninsula  and  in  Asia  Minor  Turkey  possesses 
fertile  territories,  once  the  seats  of  a  flourishing  civilization. 
Assyria,  Babylonia,  the  Ionian  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  and  Mace- 
donia were  once  the  granaries  of  the  world.  To-day  these 
territories  are  impoverished  and  famine-stricken,  hardly  able 
to  sustain  the  tenth  part  of  their  former  population.  Turkey 
herself,  the  mistress  of  these  precious  territories,  suffers  from 
chronic  financial  disability.  At  the  present  day,  when  po- 
litical questions  are  so  intimately  connected  with  financial 


24      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

conditions  and  when  national  wealth  means  national  power, 
such  countries  are  bound  to  fail  in  the  race.^ 

(2)  Hand  in  hand  with  this  economic  incapacity  goes  inter- 
nal political  incapacity,  which  has  never  known  how  to  settle 
disputes  and  establish  lasting  peace  and  order.  First  of  all, 
there  is  the  national  enmity  between  Turks  and  Arabs.  The 
northern  half  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  as  far  south  as  Tripoli 
in  Syria  is  Turkish,  the  other  half  Arab.  Probably  the  Arabs 
are  the  nobler  race  ;  they  are  also  the  nation  of  the  Prophet 
and  the  Koran ;  they  feel  it  to  be  an  injustice  that  the  Turks 
have  assumed  the  place  of  paramount  authority  in  Islam,  and 
that  the  Sultan  regards  himself  as  Khalif.  Then  there  is  the 
bitter  antagonism  of  Turks  and  Arabs  alike  against  their 
Christian  subjects.  Of  such  discord  we  shall  find  many  a 
record  in  the  following  pages.  Further,  Turkey  has  not  been 
able  to  amalgamate  with  herself  races  nominally  Muhamma- 
dan,  such  as  the  Druses,  the  Nusairiyeh,  the  Kurds,  and  the 
Muhammadan  Albanians.  Large  provinces  of  the  empire — 
Armenia,  Kurdistan,  Syria,  nearly  the  whole  of  Turkey  in 
Europe — are  in  a  chronic  state  of  ferment,  that  nowhere 
allows  of  peaceful  settlement.  It  is  often  impossible  to  say 
whether  such  countries  as  Yemen,  Central  Arabia,  and  Tripoli 
are  in  a  state  of  chronic  rebellion,  or  whether  they  have 
achieved  full  independence.  And,  to  complete  the  mischief, 
the  government  cannot  hold  in  check  the  Bedouin  hordes  from 
Arabia  and  the  Syrian  desert,  which  constantly  overrun  Syria 
and  Mesopotamia.  These  Bedouins  are  like  the  desert  sand, 
absorbing  unhindered  one  fertile  stretch  of  the  country  after 

'  In  1875  Mustafa  Fazil  Pasha,  a  brother  of  the  Khedive  of  Egypt,  wrote  to 
the  Sultan  : — Your  Majesty's  subjects,  of  whatever  faith  they  may  be,  fall  into 
two  classes,  viz  :  the  ruthlessly  oppressing  and  the  mercilessly  oppressed.  In- 
dustry, agriculture,  trade — all  lie  prone  in  the  empire.  When  a  man  can  ex- 
ploit his  neighbour,  he  takes  no  pains  to  improve  his  mind  or  his  field  ;  and 
where  tyranny  and  extortion  reign,  no  one  can  hope  for  the  fruit  of  his  labour, 
and  no  one  works.  Every  passing  year  robs  us  of  our  foreign  support.  All  the 
European  statesmen,  on  regarding  the  actions  of  your  officials,  exclaim :  That 
government  is  incapable  of  reform,  it  is  doomed  to  destruction.  Well,  sire,  are 
such  prophecies  lies  ?  (Dr.  Gundert,  "  Protestant  Missions,"  4th  Ed.,  p.  257). 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    25 

the  other,  because  there  is  no  power  to  call  a  halt.  This  inca- 
pacity for  internal  government  escapes  attention  in  some  de- 
gree because  of  the  fact  that  the  religion  of  Islam  binds 
together  all  Muhammadan  races,  so  that  they  present  a  solid 
front  against  all  non-Muhammadans.  This  bond  of  a  common 
religion  is  so  strong  that  it  transcends  the  ties  of  blood  and 
race.  A  Muhammadan  father  does  not  hesitate  to  give  testi- 
mony against  his  own  son,  should  that  son  embrace  Christian- 
ity. Those  Greeks,  Armenians  and  Bulgarians  who  have 
become  Muhammadans,  are  often,  in  the  second  and  third 
generation,  the  bitterest  opponents  of  their  countrymen  who 
have  remained  Christians,  their  new  religious  connection 
severing  even  the  ties  of  family.  This  peculiar  contrast,  on 
the  one  hand  internal,  national  enmity  of  the  bitterest  kind, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  united  opposition  against  all  outsiders, 
explains  many  curious  anomalies  in  the  history  of  Muhamma- 
dan states. 

(3)  A  third  cause  of  the  decay  of  Islam  is  the  contradiction 
between  the  teaching  of  Islam  and  established  facts.  Kead 
Sura  IX  of  the  Koran,  the  only  sura  that  is  not  introduced 
with  the  words  "  In  the  Name  of  God,  the  Merciful  and  Com- 
passionate," words  that  would  sound  blasphemous  in  this  con- 
nection. Four  months  are  allowed  to  infidels  for  considera- 
tion. If  they  are  not  converted  to  Islam  within  that  time, 
then  "  kill  the  idolaters  wheresoever  ye  shall  find  them,  and 
take  them  prisoners,  and  besiege  them,  and  lay  wait  for  them 
in  every  convenient  place ;  but  if  they  repent  and  observe  the 
appointed  times  of  prayer  and  pay  the  legal  alms,  dismiss 
them  freely  "  (Sura  IX  :  5,  Sale).^  "  Fight  against  those  unto 
whom  the  Scriptures  have  been  delivered,  and  yet  who  believe 
not  in  God,  nor  in  the  last  day,  and  forbid  not  that  which 
God  and  His  apostle  have  forbidden,  and  profess  not  the  true 
religion,  until  they  pay  tribute  by  right  of  subjection  and  they 

'  To  be  sure  Muhammad  uttered  the  famous  saying,  "There  must  be  no  com- 
pulsion in  matters  of  religion."  But  the  Arab  commentators  say,  probably  with 
truth,  that  this  declaration  was  abrogated  by  later  utterances,  such  as  those 
given  above. 


26      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

be  reduced  low."  That  Moslems  should  be  subject  to  the 
infidel  Christians  is  thus  an  intolerable  thought,  which  raises 
the  fanaticism  of  Moslems  to  the  boiling  point.  Yet  three- 
quarters  of  all  Muhammadans  are  subjects  of  Christian  nations, 
and  the  rest  are  in  more  or  less  close  dependence  on  Christian 
Europe.  What  a  contradiction  !  There  is  the  same  anomaly 
in  Muhammadan  theology  and  learning.  There  have  certainly 
been  centuries  in  which  these  have  made  great  progress.  But 
there  was  always  a  germ  of  death  in  them.  That  "  winged 
word,"  with  which  Khalif  Omar,  or  his  Egyptian  general  Amr, 
is  said  to  have  excused  the  destruction  of  the  invaluable  library 
of  Alexandria,  "Either  there  is  in  these  books  what  the 
Koran  contains,  and  then  they  are  superfluous ;  or  they  con- 
tain something  different,  and  then  they  are  false  and  noxious," 
reveals  the  fundamental  genius  of  Islam,  which  has  fallen 
like  the  frost  of  winter  on  the  scientific  spirit.  The  only 
allowable  task  of  science  is  the  codifying  and  explaining  of 
the  authoritative  words  of  Allah  in  the  Koran,  as  they  defini- 
tively regulate  all  that  bears  on  the  common  life,  the  mosque, 
the  courts  of  law,  the  bazar,  and  even  the  Khalif's  throne. 
But  this  artificial  system  of  law,  which  the  learned  deduce 
from  the  Koran  and  the  Sunna  with  hair-splitting  exactitude,  is 
in  sharp  conflict  with  stern  reality.  The  Muhammadan  higher 
schools  exhaust  themselves  in  an  attempt  to  reconcile  facts 
with  the  teaching  of  their  sacred  writings.  The  whole  modern 
state  would  have  to  be  remodeled,  in  order  to  be  brought  into 
conformity  with  the  will  of  Allah,  as  propounded  by  the 
mollahs.  The  same  contradictory  elements  are  to  be  found  in 
the  relations  of  business  and  civil  life.  This  is  increasingly  true 
in  proportion  as  European  influence  gains  ground  in  Muham- 
madan lands.  Tobacco  and  wine  are  an  abomination  to  the 
orthodox  Muhammadan.  The  camel  and  the  horse  carry  him 
on  his  journeys.  Of  railways  and  steamers,  of  electricity  and 
the  telephone  his  Koran  knows  nothing.  Could  he  but  retire 
to  some  distant  oasis  in  the  desert,  where  he  could  hear  noth- 
ing of  these  abominations  of  the  giaour,  and  where  he  could 
fashion  his  life  according  to  the  precepts  of  the  Koran  1    The 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    27 

risings  of  the  Wahabis  in  Arabia,  and  of  the  Senussi  order  in 
North  Africa,  are  typical  attempts  to  defy  the  modern  reality 
and  to  restore  the  ideal  of  Islam. 

(4)  Connected  with  this  is  the  fourth  cause  of  decay, 
the  splitting  up  of  Muhammadans  into  sects.  Persia  is  the 
classic  land  of  Muhammadan  sects,  whose  name  is  legion. 
There  are  sects  philosophical,  sects  religious,  sects  political. 
But  the  formation  of  sects  is  by  no  means  confined  to  Persia. 
As  a  rule  there  are  two  doctrines  of  Islam  that  are  a  fertile 
soil  for  the  growth  of  sects :  (a)  the  doctrine  that  Allah  calls 
an  Imam  (teacher)  in  each  generation,  who  has  divine  authority 
to  expound  the  Koran  to  his  contemporaries.  It  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  repeatedly  some  conceited  man,  haunted  by 
hallucinations,  regards  himself  as  such  an  Imam ;  (h)  the 
doctrine  that  at  the  end  of  days  the  Mahdi  is  to  finish  Mu- 
hammad's still  incomplete  work,  leading  Islam  to  be  mistress 
of  the  world.  What  a  number  of  Mahdis  have  arisen  during 
the  last  century  !  And  the  sadder  the  condition  of  Muham- 
madan countries  becomes,  the  greater  is  the  likelihood  that 
rage  at  the  disappointing  present,  and  a  yearning  for  the  Ideal 
of  Islam,  will  lead  to  Mahdi  risings. 

(5)  In  addition  to  all  this,  moral  deterioration  is  eating  at 
the  vitals  of  Muhammadan  nations.  The  Koran  allows 
polygamy,  one  of  the  worst  ethical  errors  of  Muhammad. 
Polygamy  is  everywhere  the  rule,  except  where  poverty  en- 
forces monogamy.  The  result  is  that  even  a  greater  degree 
of  sensuality  prevails  in  such  nations  than  among  Africans  or 
Hindus.  This  carnality  has  borne  fatal  fruit.  If  the  woman 
is  but  the  plaything  of  the  man  and  exists  only  to  satisfy  his 
lust,  why  need  she  be  educated  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  less  she 
knows,  the  better.  In  the  eyes  of  the  man,  she  is  but  flesh. 
This  general  feeling  has  stood  in  the  way  of  the  education  of 
women.  Unbridled  fleshly  desires,  also,  are  fanciful  and 
changeable.  The  slightest  thing  may  cause  antipathy,  or  at 
least  indifference.  Hence  divorce  and  adultery  are  common. 
Eev.  John  Young,  the  Scottish  missionary  in  Aden,  says  that 
he  does  not  know  any  man  over  thirty  who  has  not  been  mar- 


28      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

ried  two  or  three  times.  Snouck  Hurgronje  has  drawn  fear- 
ful pictures  of  the  moral  depravity  in  the  holy  city  of  Mecca, 
where  most  marriages  are  temporary,  and  where  many  women 
have  been  married  to  thirty  or  more  men  consecutiyely.  Still 
worse,  in  Asia  Minor  prostitution  is  fearfully  common,  and 
Turkish  society  in  particular  is  honeycombed  with  the  un- 
natural vice  of  pederasty.  Where  such  moral  depravity 
reigns,  a  sound  family  life  is  impossible.  The  children  grow 
up  in  the  poisonous  atmosphere  of  intrigue,  fleshly  lust,  bad 
language  and  shameless  licentiousness.  They  are  polluted 
from  youth  up.  It  is  perhaps  the  greatest  curse  of  the  Ori- 
ental Churches,  that  they  have  to  exist  in  such  an  atmosphere 
and  are  liable  to  become  infected  by  the  surrounding  corrup- 
tion. It  is  refreshing,  when  wandering  through  these  moral 
wastes,  to  come  upon  a  people  like  the  Kurds,  a  people  morally 
pure,  and  therefore  robust ;  and  one  feels  almost  inclined  to 
forgive  them  their  ingrained  robber  instincts  because  of  their 
moral  purity.  It  is  terrible  that  one  who  knows  Islam  as 
thoroughly  as  does  William  Gifford  Palgrave,  especially  as  it 
is  in  Asia  Minor  and  Arabia,  must  sum  up  his  verdict  in  these 
strong  words  :  Only  "  when  the  Koran  and  Mecca  shall  have 
disappeared  from  Arabia,  can  we  expect  to  see  the  Arab  as- 
sume that  place  in  the  ranks  of  civilization,  from  which  Mu- 
hammad and  his  book  have,  more  than  an3'^  other  cause,  long 
held  him  back"  ("The  Mohammedan  World  of  To-day," 
p.  80).^    In  spite  of  all  this  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  look  for 

*  Never  perhaps  was  the  general  decline  of  Islam  more  plainly  set  forth  than 
at  a  conference  of  prominent  and  learned  Muhammadans  which  met  at  Mecca 
from  the  27th  of  March  to  the  10th  of  April,  1899,  to  enquire  into  the  reasons  of 
this  decline  and  to  devise  remedies.  The  chairman  opened  the  proceedings  with 
an  assertion  that  in  any  two  adjacent  countries,  districts,  villages  or  homes,  one 
of  which  is  Muhammadan,  the  other  not,  you  will  find  the  Moslems  less  ener- 
getic, worse  organized  in  every  respect,  less  skillful  in  the  arts  and  trades  than 
the  non-Moslems,  though  the  former  may  excel  the  latter  in  such  other  virtues 
as  honesty,  courage  and  liberality.  In  explanation  of  this  sad  state  of  things, 
the  conference  adduced  no  fewer  than  fifty-six  causes,  embracing  the  whole  range 
of  life,  religious,  political  and  social.  It  was  resolved  to  found  a  society  for  the 
revivifying  of  Islam,  the  society  of  ' '  the  Mother  of  the  Villages, ' '  and  to  establish 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    29 

an  early  collapse  of  Islam,  even  though  it  should  lose  its  last 
remnant  of  political  power.  There  remains  real  vitality  in 
the  Muhammadan  world.  The  more  Islam  decays  outwardly, 
the  more  does  this  inner  vitality  reveal  itself.  It  finds  ex- 
pression, above  all,  in  the  orders  of  dervishes,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  phenomena  in  the  Moslem  world.  Since  Islam 
developed  near  one  of  the  chief  seats  of  the  early  Christian 
colonies  of  monks  in  Egypt  and  the  Sinaitic  peninsula,  and 
since  she  won  her  first  successes  in  countries  in  which  the 
monastic  idea  had  taken  root,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that, 
in  Islam  also,  similar  tendencies  asserted  themselves.  The 
oldest  dervish  order  is  said  to  have  been  founded  by  the 
Khalif  Abu  Bekr,  Muhammad's  uncle.  Centuries  passed,  how- 
ever, before  this  dervish  idea  became  fully  developed.  It  was 
too  foreign  to  the  genius  of  Islam  to  find  a  home  there  quickly. 
In  1165  Abdul  Kadr  el  Jilani,  of  Bagdad,  founded  the  most 
celebrated  of  the  earlier  orders.  Not  till  the  political  de- 
cline of  Islam  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  the  number  of 
dervish  orders,  till  then  small,  increased,  by  way  of  reaction 
as  it  were,  to  eighty-eight.  Millions  of  adherents  flock  to 
them.  They  are  perhaps  the  most  valuable  spiritual  asset  of 
modern  Islam. 

Following  the  example  of  the  Muhammadan  theologian, 

in  Mecca  a  Koraishite  Khalifate  of  a  decidedly  ecclesiastical  character,  to  be  main- 
tained by  an  army  drawn  from  all  Muhammadan  states.  The  learned  Oxford 
Orientalist,  Professor  Margoliouth,  concludes  his  report  of  this  significant  con- 
ference by  raising  the  weighty  question,  "Has  Islam  any  golden  age  to  look 
back  on,  except  in  the  sense  that  at  one  time  Muhammadan  sultans  were  a  terror 
to  their  neighbours,  whereas  now  their  neighbours  are  safe  from  their  raids?  " 
In  answer  to  which  he  asserts  that  "  there  is  no  real  abuse  current  in  Muham- 
madan states  from  which  they  have  ever  been  free,  except  by  accident,  for  a 
limited  time.  .  .  .  The  days  of  the  '  Pious  Khalifs '  could  they  be  repro- 
duced, would  mean  no  progress  even  in  the  most  backward  Islamic  countries. 
The  strengthening  of  Islam,  if  it  is  not  to  be  a  calamity  to  the  whole  world,  is 
not  to  be  effected  by  the  reproduction  of  a  barbarous  past,  but  by  an  attempt  to 
utilize  the  vast  force  which  Islam  represents,  as  a  factor  in  the  real  progress  of 
the  civilizing  and  ennobling  of  the  race.  And  whether  this  can  be  done,  or  the 
■whole  of  this  huge  capital  must  be  '  written  off '  is  the  question  which  re- 
formers have  to  solve"  ("East  and  West,"  1907,  p.  393). 


3©      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

GhazalijOne  of  whose  works  is  a  standard  in  Muhamraadan theol- 
ogy, this  theology  is  divided  into  three  parts,  Law,  Dogmatics 
and  Mysticism.  This  mysticism  acquired  an  independent  and 
recognized  position.  Apart  from  a  knowledge  of  the  law,  the 
thoroughly  educated  Moslem  theologian  requires  special  train- 
ing to  enable  him  to  come  into  communion  with  Allah.  To 
effect  this  is  the  task  of  mysticism.  It  is  an  anciently  accepted 
principle  that  a  personal  instructor,  a  murshid,  is  necessary. 
Such  instructors  are  supplied  by  the  mystical  orders,  the 
tariqas.  The  founder  of  an  order  is  believed  to  be  in  direct 
communication  with  Allah,  this  spiritual  bond  passing  over  to 
the  sheikh  of  the  order  for  the  time  being,  the  sheikh  being 
connected  with  the  founder  by  his  silsilah,  or  "  spiritual  in- 
heritance." The  sheikh,  either  immediately  and  personally,  or 
through  vicars  and  Khalifs  commissioned  by  him,  has  the  care 
of  all  souls  who  place  themselves  under  his  spiritual  guidance 
and  enter  his  tariqa,  or  order.  Orthodoxy  demands  that  the 
study  of  mysticism  be  engaged  in  only  after  a  man  has  been 
well  grounded  in  law  and  doctrine.  In  practice,  however,  the 
dervish  orders  try  to  attract  to  themselves  the  ignorant  masses, 
who  have  had  no  previous  training. 

The  organization^  of  the  orders  is  generally  identical. 
At  the  head  stands  the  grand  master,  called  the  sheikh,  who 
claims  obedience  from  every  member.  The  dervishes  live 
in  zawiyahs  or  monasteries,  under  a  mukaddim,  or  abbot. 
The  full  members  of  the  order,  living  in  the  community,  are 
ikhwan  or  Tchuan,  i.e.,  brethren.  Side  by  side  with  them 
are  the  lay  members,  who  follow  worldly  callings,  but  in  times 
of  danger  gather  round  the  order  by  which  they  are  protected. 
The  novitiate  is  a  long  and  fatiguing  process.  At  first  the 
novice  has  to  perform  ascetic  exercises  with  the  object  of  mor- 
tifying his  personal  will  and  of  making  him  a  pliable  tool  in 
the  hands  of  his  superiors.  His  advance  in  the  order  is  but 
slow,  from  one  grade  to  another  according  to  his  fitness.  All 
the  orders  aim  at  deepening  the  religious  life  by  means  of  an 

^Cf.  Miss.  Rev.,  1900,  pp.  372 ff.,  1902,  pp.  732 ff.  "Missions  wissenaohaftliohe 
Studien,"  pp.  129 ff.    Sell,  "  Essays  on  Islam,"  pp.  99 ff. 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    31 

ecstatic  sinking  of  the  soul  in  Allah.  Seven  steps  in  this  proc- 
ess seem  to  be  common  to  all  the  brotherhoods.  The  first 
and  second  comprise  the  dikr  and  the  common  rules  of  Islam. 
The  dikr  (tikr,  trika)  is  the  special  formula  constituting  the 
peculiar  feature  of  the  order.  It  is  added  to  every  prayer  and 
is  frequently  repeated  at  every  religious  service.  The  third 
step  is  the  ecstatic  passion ;  the  fourth,  the  ecstasy  of  the 
heart ;  the  fifth,  the  ecstasy  of  the  immortal  soul ;  the  sixth, 
the  mystical  ecstasy ;  the  seventh,  the  ecstasy  of  absorption 
in  Allah.  These  steps  are  reached  by  fasts,  vigils  and  special 
exercises.  On  the  lowest  step  the  dervish  is  only  a  "  learner  " ; 
on  the  second,  a  "  seeker  after  God  " ;  on  the  third,  o^fakir^ 
i.  e.,  a  man  who  has  dissolved  himself  into  the  Nothing.  On 
the  fourth  step,  he  is  a  suji,  i.  e.,  an  object  of  divine  love. 
At  this  stage  he  begins  to  have  visions  and  revelations,  which 
he  regards  as  coming  directly  from  Allah.  Then  he  becomes 
a  salek,  "  a  man  who  makes  for  the  goal,  i.  e.,  God."  On  the 
next  step  he  is  "  drawn  to  God,"  and  constantly  shouts  in 
ecstasy.  After  this  he  becomes  either  a  "  holy  fool "  or  a 
"  holy  teacher,"  and  is  filled  with  the  spirit  of  Muhammad. 
There  is  yet  a  higher  step,  when  the  man  shall  become  equal 
to  God,  and  the  soul  lose  its  individuality,  being  absorbed  in 
God.  Very  seldom,  however,  does  any  one  reach  a  higher 
level  than  that  of  a  "  holy  fool."  Men  of  this  grade  are  com- 
mon in  Arabian  towns.  Though  they  do  not  beg,  they  live  by 
alms,  and  are  frequently  seen  running  naked  through  the 
streets. 

To  give  an  example  of  the  exercises  of  these  dervishes,  we 
will  describe  those  of  the  hadirija  order.  The  members  of 
this  brotherhood  have,  at  every  prayer  exercise,  to  repeat 
(1)  "  There  is  no  God  but  Allah  "  165  times ;  (2)  "  God  be 
merciful  to  me,"  100  times ;  (3)  the  dikr  of  the  order,  "  Oh, 
Allah,  bless  our  lord  and  master  Abdul  Kadir  10,000  times 
more  than  there  are  atoms  in  the  air,"  100  times.  Then  the 
worshipper  sits  cross-legged  on  the  ground,  his  right  hand 
resting  with  upturned  palm  on  his  right  knee,  while  his  left 
hand  lies  on  his  left  leg.     In  this  position  he  continues  to  utter 


32      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  name  of  Allah  slowly  and  softly,  until  all  evil  thoughts 
vanish— it  may  be  1,000  or  2,000  times— giving  special  empha- 
sis to  the  last  syllable  in  "  Allahw."  Then  he  turns  his  head 
1,000  to  2,000  times  regularly  from  left  to  right,  repeating  in 
the  same  way  "  Allaha  "  until  good  thoughts  come.  Finally 
he  bows  his  head  low  the  same  number  of  times,  always  re- 
peating "  Allah^,"  until  he  has  no  thoughts  at  all,  or,  as  the 
dervish  expresses  it,  "  until  all  thought  is  absorbed  in  God." 
With  other  orders  the  process  is  not  so  quiet ;  they  employ 
stronger  methods  to  induce  the  ecstasy.  For  instance,  the 
aisawiya  join  hands  in  a  circle,  and,  under  the  lead  of  their 
sheikh  sway  their  bodies  from  right  to  left,  uttering  hundreds 
of  times  the  name  of  Allah.  The  oftener  they  do  this,  the 
greater  becomes  their  excitement.  Sometimes  they  cry 
"  Allah  "  5,000  or  10,000  times.  Finally  they  jump  up  and  shout 
the  name  as  loud  as  they  can.  Nor  do  they  cease  until  they 
collapse  in  a  fainting  condition,  whereupon  they  are  shoved 
aside,  others  taking  their  places.  Some  place  prickly  fruits 
on  their  naked  backs  and  roll  about  upon  them.  Others  inhale 
the  poisonous  fumes  of  charcoal  until  they  become  demented. 
Others  again  place  splinters  of  wood  in  their  eyes,  cheeks, 
tongue,  or  sides,  while  some  stand  and  jump  on  the  edge  of  a 
sharp  sword,  or  fix  the  point  of  a  sword  on  their  bodies  and 
let  it  be  tapped  with  a  boot  or  stick.  As  soon  as  they  are  in 
this  way  brought  to  the  verge  of  madness,  the  sheikh  gives 
them  a  live  sheep,  which  they  rapidly  devour,  skin  and  hair 
included,  fighting  like  mad  dogs  for  the  most  repulsive  parts 
— and  all  this  in  the  name  of  God  !  Most  nearly  related  to 
the  aisawiya  are  the  two  best  known  European  dervish 
orders,  the  rufaiya,  or  "  howling  dervishes,"  and  the  maula- 
wiya^  or  "dancing  dervishes."  ^ 

^Snouck  Hurgronje,  a  recognized  authority  on  modern  Islam,  says  of  the  ka. 
dirija:  "Expressions  of  the  religious  life  resembling  madness  are  observed  only 
in  brethren  of  the  lower  grades  of  the  order,  or,  in  a  more  refined  form,  in  the 
most  secret  assemblies  of  the  initiated.  Yet  .  .  .  these  brethren  like  to 
linger  on  the  border  of  two  worlds,  in  the  half-light  with  half-closed  eyes.  Their 
highest  ideal  is  to  have  during  their  earthly  life  intoxicated  feelings,  which  can- 
not be  described  in  human  speech."    Nor  do  we  misa  here  "  the  indispensable 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    33 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  that  orders  which  effect  this 
kind  of  piety  should  represent  the  strength  of  Islam.  And 
yet  to  their  activity  Islam  owes  its  most  important  progress, 
its  greatest  conquests  in  the  nineteenth  century.  The  scope 
of  the  Tcadirijob  is  chiefly  in  Western  Sudan,  the  desire  of 
its  adherents  being  to  spread  the  Muhammadan  faith  among 
the  heathen  nations  of  Africa.  They  are  to  be  found  as  far 
south  as  Sierra  Leone  and  the  upper  Niger.  The  fact  that  a 
tribe,  as  soon  as  it  becomes  Muhammadan,  is  spared  by  the 
slave  dealers,  has  added  large  populations  to  Islam. 

The  tiyaniyah  order  is  powerful  chiefly  in  Tunis,  exercising 
its  influence  as  far  as  Sierra  Leone  and  Timbuctoo.  This  order 
must  be  chiefly  credited  with  the  mighty  advance  of  Islam  in 
North  and  East  Africa. 

At  present  the  most  important  and  powerful  order  is  the 
sanussiyah.  Founded  in  1843  by  the  Algerian  sheikh  Sanussi, 
and  since  his  death  in  1859,  led  with  equal  skill  by  his  son,  this 
order  possessed  in  1886  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  monaster- 
ies and  houses  of  the  order  and  had,  counting  the  lay  brethren, 
about  eight  million  adherents.  In  Tripoli  its  power  is  so  great 
that  Turkish  authority  is  little  more  than  nominal.  The  order 
found  a  special  promoter  and  adherent  in  the  person  of  the 
Sultan  of  Wadai,  through  whose  influence  the  population  of 
the  adjacent  district  of  Ennedi  embraced  Islam.  The  mon- 
asteries of  the  sanussiyah  are  found  as  far  as  Morocco,  and 
their  influence  in  the  interior  of  Africa,  on  the  upper  and 
middle  Niger,  is  on  the  increase.  "  The  great  aim  of  Sheikh 
Sanussi  in  his  work  of  reformation  is  the  reestablishment  of 
the  original  Islam,  as  he  imagines  it,  the  reintroduction  of  the 
moral  and  religious  laws  and  precepts  of  the  Prophet,  the  re- 
newing of  the  purity  of  the  Islamitic  faith,  free  from  the 
besmirching  influence  of  European  civilization  and  Christian- 
ity. All  the  modern  innovations  in  Turkey  and  Egypt  were 
hateful  to  him,  and  he  therefore  adopted  an  Arabic  motto  for 

movements  of  the  body  and  head,  full  of  hypnotic  suggestion,  whereby  the  sa- 
cred formulse  pass  from  one  shoulder  through  the  heart  to  the  other  side  and 
wander  through  various  parts  of  the  body  "  (Mekka  II,  p.  378). 


34      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

his  order,  "  The  Turks  and  Christians  belong  to  the  same 
category  :  we  will  destroy  them  both  at  the  same  time."- 

Much  has  been  said  about  Muhammadan  missionaries  and 
Muharamadan  missionary  societies  ;  but  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  understand  it,  there  are  no  such  organizations  in  Islam,  or 
at  least  they  have  been  very  short-lived. 

Nor  are  the  orders,  though  they  perform  the  greatest  part 
of  the  work,  really  the  pioneers  of  Islam  among  infidels.  It  is, 
rather,  characteristic  of  the  Muhammadans,  that,  as  a  rule, 
every  merchant  or  traveller  is  a  propagator  of  his  faith.  As 
far  as  the  Hausa  merchants  advance  in  West  Africa,  so  far  does 
Islam  extend.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  in  the  first  three 
centuries  of  Christianity,  the  time  of  its  most  rapid  expansion, 
the  name  of  hardly  one  officially  appointed  missionary  is  re- 
corded after  the  death  of  the  Apostles.  And  yet  Christianity- 
penetrated  country  after  country  victoriously,  and  congrega- 
tions sprang  up  like  mushrooms.  Every  Christian  was  a  mis- 
sionary of  his  faith,  and,  wherever  he  went,  he  preached  it  and 
gained  converts.  Alas !  how  different  it  is  now  with  the 
Christians  scattered  over  the  whole  world.  But  it  still  holds 
good  of  Islam ;  and  this  championship  of  his  faith  by  the  simple 
Moslem,  his  boldness  and  punctuality  in  performing  his  relig- 
ious duties  even  in  the  most  alien  surroundings,  prove  to  be  a 
most  effectual  means  of  propagating  his  religion.  The  der- 
vishes follow  in  the  track  of  these  simple  forerunners. 

It  has  sometimes  been  expected  that  the  progress  of  Islam 
would  be  crippled  in  proportion  to  the  waning  of  the  Crescent, 
and  as  the  claim  of  Islam  to  be  a  political  power  becomes  il- 
lusory. Facts  teach  that  in  its  contact  with  the  lower  forms 
of  religion  among  the  negroes,  the  Malays  and  the  pariahs  of 
India,  the  missionary  power  of  Islam  would  seem  to  increase  in 
proportion  as  Islam  loses  the  support  of  political  influence  and 
the  sword.  In  its  propaganda  Islam  possesses  a  great  advan- 
tage over  Christianity  ;  it  forms  a  gigantic,  concentrated  body, 
which  by  the  natural  law  of  attraction  assimilates  all  that 
comes  within  a  certain  range.  Christianity  is  represented 
only  by  individuals,  or  at  most  by  numerically  insignificant 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    35 

communities  scattered  throughout  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
missionary  world  of  Asia,  Africa  and  Oceanica.  Where  it  is 
in  a  position  to  appear  with  the  full  weight  of  its  ecclesiastical 
and  political  organizations,  as  in  South  Africa,  North  America 
and  the  Australian  continent,  the  process  of  Christianization 
is  rapid.  Such  favourable  conditions  are  the  rule  for  Islam, 
but  for  Christianity  the  exception.  It  must  be  added  that, 
while  both  religions  enjoy  the  advantage  of  offering  the  ben- 
efit, so  attractive  to  savages,  of  leading  them  from  barbarism 
to  a  certain  appearance  of  civilization,  Islam  with  its  polyg- 
amy, slavery,  spirit  worship  and  tolerance  of  sorcery,  makes 
far  lower  moral  demands  than  Christianity,  which  in  many 
cases  is  also  hindered  by  racial  animosities  between  black  and 
white.  Thus  it  becomes  apparent  how  Islam  develops  con- 
siderable missionary  power  among  the  uncivilized  peoples  of 
Africa  and  India. 

Still  another  factor  in  the  world  of  Islam  must  be  taken 
into  account,  the  idea  of  Panislamism.  As  Muhammad  had 
the  empire  of  the  world  conferred  upon  him  by  Allah,  so,  ac- 
cording to  the  Muhammadan  view,  his  Khalif  is  the  rightful 
ruler  of  all  the  Faithful, — the  only  one  called  to  rule  the 
world.  Since  the  assassination  of  the  fourth  lawful  Khalif, 
Ali,  the  honour  of  the  Khalifate  has  passed  from  one  dynasty 
to  another.  But  since  this  dignity  was  surrendered  by  the 
Abbaside  Khalif  of  Egypt  in  1517  to  the  Osmanli  Sultan, 
Selim  I,  it  has  been  claimed  by  the  Sultan  of  Constantinople. 
For  many  Sultans  it  may  have  been  a  mere  title,  used  to  en- 
sure their  position  with  their  subjects.  The  Sultan  Abdul 
Hamid  (from  1876)  recognized  the  possible  importance 
of  the  claim  involved  in  this  title  in  view  of  the  excitable  char- 
acter of  the  Moslems.  By  a  secret,  yet  organized  agitation 
in  every  Muhammadan  country,  he  endeavoured  to  commend 
himself  to  all  orthodox  Moslems  as  the  only  lawful  Khalif. 
It  is  true  that  the  Persian  Shiites,  the  Arabian  Wahabites 
and  the  Moslems  of  Morocco  refuse  to  acknowledge  this 
claim ;  true  also,  that  barely  a  twelfth  part  of  the  Muham- 
madans — about  nineteen  millions  out  of  two  hundred  and 


36     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

twenty-five  millions — are  really  under  the  dominion  of  this 
Sultan ;  true  again  that  the  proud  Arabs,  following  an  ancient 
tradition,  claim  that  only  one  of  Koraishite  blood  may  be- 
come Khalif,  and  that  therefore  only  the  Sherif  of  Mecca  has 
a  right  to  the  title.  Nevertheless  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
this  agitation  about  the  Khalifate  has  had  a  real  efifect  upon 
the  minds  of  Muhammadans.  Were  the  Sultan,  like  his  pred- 
ecessors in  former  centuries,  still  the  "  ever- victorious,"  Mos- 
lems in  all  the  world  would  willingly  submit  themselves  to 
the  "Commander  of  the  Faithful."  Owing  to  the  present 
feebleness  of  the  "  Sick  Man  on  the  Bosphorus,"  this  ideal  is 
far  from  fulfillment,  yet  this  agitation  constitutes  a  constant, 
latent  danger  to  European  governments  in  Muhammadan  col- 
onies. It  is  curious  that  the  agitation  is  strongest  in  Muham- 
madan Egypt,  governed  by  Christian  England.  It  must  be 
added  that  it  is  merely  agitation  and  not  an  organized,  combined 
effort.  It  is  with  Islam  as  it  is  with  the  Protestant  Churches. 
Its  radically  democratic  character  renders  combined  actions 
beyond  the  limits  of  each  state  very  diflBcult.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
this  lack  of  combination,  the  ferment  of  Muhammadan  fanati- 
cism engendered  by  such  movements  is  felt  throughout  the 
Muhammadan  world.  In  the  Crimean  war  Muhammadans 
held  the  grotesque  view  that  the  French  and  English  rushed 
as  his  vassals  to  the  help  of  the  "  Kuler  of  the  World  "  against 
the  insolent  rebel,  Russia. 

The  result  was  that  a  high  tide  of  Muhammadan  rebellion 
broke  upon  Muhammadan  countries  under  infidel  rule,  with 
the  object  of  shaking  off  the  offensive  yoke  of  the  unbe- 
lievers. Thus,  in  1857,  occurred  the  mutiny  in  India;  in 
1859,  the  rebellion  in  Borneo ;  in  1858-1861,  Muhammadan 
risings  in  Kan-su,  Shen-si  and  Yunnan.  This  beating  of  a 
single  pulse  throughout  the  entire  Muhammadan  body  con- 
stitutes the  danger  of  Panislamism. 

3.     The  Oriental    Churches 
From  the  beginning  the  chief  immediate  aim  of  Protestant 
Missions  in  the  Near  East  has  been  to  infuse  new  spiritual 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    37 

vigour  into,  and  to  kindle  new  intellectual  light  in,  the  Oriental 
Churches.  It  is  therefore  necessary  to  give  some  general  in- 
formation about  the  political  and  religious  state  of  those 
Churches.  To  become  acquainted  with  them  is  of  high  in- 
terest to  the  student  of  church  history.  It  is  as  if  he  were 
turning  over  the  torn  yellow  pages  of  a  pictuVe-book.  Ancient 
religious  controversies,  sympathies  and  antipathies  come  to  life 
again,  that  have  lain  hidden  under  the  debris  of  twelve  or 
thirteen  centuries. 

The  East  Roman  Church  was  the  backbone  of  the  early 
church  development.  From  the  time  of  Constantine  it  was 
the  established  Church  of  the  Eastern  Empire.  It  exists  in 
the  present  day  as  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church. 

In  the  grand  ecclesiastical  traditions  of  Origen,  Athanasius, 
Basil,  the  Gregorys,  and  of  John  Chrysostora,  this  Church 
possesses  a  magnificent  heritage  from  the  Past.  Since,  in  ad- 
dition, she  has  been  upheld  by  the  Greeks,  a  people  as  men- 
tally vigorous  and  intellectually  gifted  as  they  are  self-con- 
scious and  proud  of  their  glorious  history,  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  Greek  Church  occupies  by  far  the  most 
prominent  position  in  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  the  Christian 
East.  To  this  Greek  Orthodox  Church  belong  (1)  the  great 
Eussian  Church  in  which  the  Czar  holds  well-nigh  the  same 
position  of  supremacy  which  the  Byzantine  Emperor  formerly 
held ;  (2)  the  group  of  churches  among  the  Slavonic  peoples 
of  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  embracing  Bulgarians,  Servians, 
Roumanians,  Ruthenians  and  others,  and  (3)  a  group  of  Greek 
Churches  in  Greece,  Macedonia,  Asia  Minor  and  in  those 
former  centres  of  Graeco-Macedonian  civilization,  Syria,  Pales- 
tine and  Egypt ;  in  all  about  ninety  millions.  These  groups 
of  Churches  are  organized  into  no  single  ecclesiastical  body. 
The  vigorous  Sultan  Mahmud  II,  indeed,  recognizing  the  fact 
that  as  a  Muhammadan  he  could  not  do  justice  to  his  Christian 
subjects,  transferred  the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  oversight 
(rumi  melleti)  over  all  Christians  to  the  Patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople, after  the  taking  of  this  city  in  1453.  Yet,  as 
those  parts  of  Turkey  in  which  Christianity  prevailed  broke 


38      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

away  from  the  Turkish  yoke  and  were  organized  into  inde- 
pendent states,  they  asserted  at  the  same  time  their  ecclesi- 
astical independence  of  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  and 
strove  to  build  up  national  Churches  among  themselves.  Thus 
autonomous  Churches  were  founded  in  Greece,  Montenegro, 
Servia,  Koumania,  Hungary,  etc.  Even  within  the  dominions 
of  Turkey,  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  had  not  sufficient 
power  nor  prestige  to  maintain  papal  authority  over  the 
churches  of  his  creed.  The  Patriarchs  of  Alexandria,  Antioch 
and  Jerusalem  looked  back  upon  an  equally  glorious  ecclesi- 
astical past,  and  enjoyed  so  great  a  prestige  on  account  of  the 
holy  places  lying  in  their  territory,  that  they  became  autono- 
mous and  independent  of  Constantinople  in  nearly  every  re- 
spect, although  their  independence  is  not  legally  defined. 
Even  the  small  Orthodox  Greek  Church  of  Cyprus  and  the 
"  archbishopric "  of  the  fifty  monks  of  the  Sinai  Monastery 
became  autonomous.  Several  factors  contribute  to  the  further 
loosening  of  this  feeble  ecclesiastical  connection.  In  the 
"orthodox"  churches  of  Mediterranean  lands,  Greek  has  for 
ages  been  the  language  of  the  church  services  and  of  ecclesi- 
astical learning.  The  patriarchs,  therefore,  claimed  the  right 
to  put  Greeks  into  all  the  important  livings  under  their  con- 
trol, even  though  the  congregations  might  not  understand 
Greek.  This  gave  rise  to  a  fateful  quarrel  with  the  Bul- 
garians, a  people  proud  of  their  nationality  and  very  ambi- 
tious. They  considered  it  an  insult,  that  Greeks  should  be 
the  superior  clergy  and  should  conduct  the  services  in  Greek. 
The  obstinacy  of  the  Constantinople  Patriarchate  on  the  one 
hand,  which  refused  to  accede  to  the  just  demands  of  the 
Bulgarians,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  backing  up  of  the 
latter  by  the  Russian  government,  led,  in  1870,  to  the  issuing 
by  the  Sultan  of  a  firman  declaring  the  Bulgarian  Church 
practically  independent  of  the  Patriarch,  and  conferring  upon 
it  an  autonomous  "  Exarchate."  Although  the  Patriarch  re- 
plied by  excommunicating  the  Bulgarian  Church,  thereby 
forcing  it  into  a  kind  of  schism,  the  latter  has  maintained  its 
autonomy,  and  is  striving  hard  to  annex  the  whole  Bulgarian 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    39 

nation  to  its  ecclesiastical,  as  well  as  to  its  political,  organiza- 
tion. The  Bulgarians  number  two  and  a  half  millions  in 
Bulgaria  itself,  and  one  and  a  half  millions  in  European 
Turkey,  most  of  the  latter  being  found  in  Macedonia. 

Similar  difficulties  confront  the  Patriarchates  of  Antioch 
and  Jerusalem.  It  is  true  that  in  these  districts  Greek  was 
originally  the  language  of  the  church  services,  of  culture  and 
of  trade,  and  that  the  Fathers  of  this  region  were  without 
exception  Greeks.  Yet,  after  the  Arabian  conquest  in  the 
middle  of  the  seventh  century,  language  and  civilization  under- 
went a  complete  change.  The  native  population,  including  the 
Christians,  adopted  the  Arabic  language,  so  that  even  Greek 
families,  which  immigrated  in  former  centuries,  speak  Arabic, 
though  perhaps  in  the  family  circle  Greek  is  spoken  and 
understood.  This  being  so,  the  congregations  feel  it  to  be  an 
insult  that  only  Greek-speaking  ecclesiastics  are  placed  over 
them  as  bishops  and  higher  clergy.  And  they  have  a 
powerful  supporter  of  their  claims  in  Eussia,  who  is  striving 
to  establish  her  political  supremacy  throughout  the  Near  East 
on  the  basis  of  an  ecclesiastical  unity  in  Syria  and  Palestine. 

Of  the  loose  group  of  Orthodox  Greek  Churches  within  the 
Turkish  Empire  the  Patriarchate  of  Constantinople  is  the  most 
important.  To  it  belong  the  churches  in  Asia  Minor  and  in 
that  portion  of  European  Turkey  in  which  the  population  is 
Greek  by  birth  and  language  with  only  a  slight  intermingling 
of  Slavs.  The  congregations  connected  with  this  Patriarchate 
number,  approximately,  two  and  a  half  million  souls.  Here, 
apart  from  a  not  inconsiderable  portion  of  the  interior  high- 
lands of  Asia  Minor,  where  it  has  been  superseded  by  the 
Turkish  or  Armenian  tongues,  the  Greek  language  is  used 
by  the  people  and  in  the  churches.  Compared  with  this  large 
Patriarchate,  those  of  Alexandria,  Antioch  and  Jerusalem 
appear  poor  enough.  Alexandria  lost  the  greater  part  of  her 
congregations  as  far  back  as  the  sixth  century,  when  nearly 
the  entire  Egyptian  Church  seceded  to  Monophysitism.  Dur- 
ing fourteen  centuries  of  Muhammadan  oppression,  their 
number  has  further  declined,  so  that  at  the  present  day  there 


40      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

are  only  10,000  native  members,  in  addition  to  40,000  immi- 
grants, especially  from  Greece  and  the  islands  of  the  Mgean 
Sea.  The  Patriarchate  of  Antioch  has  about  250,000  Syrians, 
most  of  whom  speak  Arabic.  In  the  Patriarchate  of  Jerusalem, 
there  are  at  most  50,000  to  51,000  (the  greater  part  of  whom  also 
speak  Arabic),  the  largest  congregations  being  in  Jerusalem, 
Jaffa  and  Nazareth  (5,000  each),  Bethlehem  (3,800),  Beit 
Jala  (4,000),  Beit  Sahur  (1,150),  Lydda,  Gaza  and  Kamleh 
(about  1,000  each). 

The  creed  of  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church  is  based  on  the 
seven  Ecumenical  Councils ;  it  teaches  baptismal  regeneration, 
the  conferring  of  the  Holy  Spirit  by  the  anointing  with  holy 
oil,  transubstantiation,  etc.  Prominent  in  the  religious  life  of 
the  people  are  the  veneration  (not  the  worship, — Txpoa/iuvfj<n<i 
not  ^arpsia)  of  the  Saints,  relics  and  icons,  and,  above  all. 
the  paying  of  all  but  divine  reverence  to  the  Virgin  Mary. 
The  doctrine  of  Purgatory  is  rejected,  but  prayers  and  masses 
for  the  dead  in  their  intermediate  state  are  generally  observed. 
Critics  from  the  most  diverse  points  of  view  all  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  true  religion  is  seriously  declining.  National 
feeling  is  the  strength  and  stay  of  the  Church.  To  secede 
from  the  Church  of  the  Fathers  is  simply  unpatriotic  and  dis- 
loyal. Protestants,  particularly,  are  regarded  as  dangerous 
innovators,  a  secret  society  after  the  pattern  of  Freemasonry, 
greatly  to  be  distrusted  from  a  moral  point  of  view.  The 
superior  clergy  and  the  monks  are  celibate,  while  the  lower 
clergy  both  in  town  and  in  country  are  permitted  to  marry. 

In  the  fifth  century  the  churches  of  the  Parthian  Empire 
separated  themselves  from  the  Byzantine  State  Church  and  be- 
came the  East  Syrian  Chnrch.  Founded  by  Syrians  and 
intimately  connected  by  language  and  civilization  with  the 
intellectually  active  Church  of  West  Syria,  to  which  belonged 
Ephrem  Syrus,  Diodorus  of  Tarsus  and  Theodore  of 
Mopsuestia,  this  church  adopted  Nestorius'  doctrine  of  the 
Two  Natures,  thus  separating  itself  from  the  homogeneous 
and  united  Catholic  Church.  This  schism  must  be  attributed 
to  political  rather  than  to  dogmatic  motives.     Throughout 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    41 

the  rule  of  the  Parthian  Arsazides  and  Sassanides,  the  Parthian 
Empire  was  in  constant  conflict  with  the  Byzantine.  In  the 
midst  of  this  ruinous  strife  an  ecclesiastical  barrier  against 
the  Byzantine  Church  was  in  some  sense  a  political  safeguard. 
Thus  the  Nestorian  Church  was  incited  to  develop  its 
peculiarities  of  practice  and  doctrine  and  to  engage  in  extensive 
missionary  work.  In  spite  of  great  resistance  and  fierce  per- 
secution on  the  part  of  the  rulers  of  the  Sassanian  dynasty, 
who  did  their  utmost  to  make  the  fire-worship  of  Zoroaster  a 
national  religion,  Christianity  spread  throughout  Persia  and 
far  beyond  into  India  and  the  heart  of  China.  Even  under 
Muhammadan  rule  these  Nestorians  of  the  East  for  centuries 
carried  on  a  vast  missionary  work,  of  which,  however,  but 
scanty  information  has  come  down  to  us.  Those  times  are 
gone.  Of  this  Church  that  formerly  extended  over  half  Asia, 
there  are  to-day  but  about  100,000  members.  They  live  in  a 
district  whose  borders  may  be  defined  by  Mosul  in  the  south- 
west, the  Lake  of  Van  in  the  northwest,  and  the  Lake  of  Urmia 
in  the  east.^ 

They  are  exposed  to  the  merciless  attacks  of  the  Kurds,  be- 
tween whom  and  themselves  there  has  been  for  centuries  un- 
ending feud.  Probably  they  will  in  the  end  be  exterminated 
by  their  wild  neighbours.  The  ecclesiastical  and  political 
head  of  this  small  but  brave  Church  is  a  patriarch  who  always 
has   the  hereditary   name   of   Shimon,   and  who  resides  in 

*  In  the  absence  of  reliable  statistics,  it  is  difficult  to  give  definite  figures.  In 
1831  Smith  and  Dwigbt  calculated  14,054  families,  numbering  70,000  souls 
("Researches  in  Armenia,"  Vol.  II,  pp.  218  fE.).  Oussaui,  in  Johns  Hopkins' 
Semitic  Papers  (1902),  probably  overestimating  their  number,  gives  for  the  pres- 
ent day  150,000  members,  250  churches,  thirteen  archbishops  and  bishops  and 
about  300  priests.  It  is  certain  that  not  more  than  from  twenty-three  to  twenty- 
five  thousand  Syrians  live  in  Persia,  while  statistics  of  the  numbers  in  Turkey 
vary  considerably.  Since  the  Armenian  massacres  in  1895  and  1896,  which  also 
severely  afflicted  the  Nestorians  in  Turkey,  the  Nestorian  population  in  Turkey 
has  been,  at  least  for  the  time  being,  considerably  displaced.  It  was  calculated 
that  by  the  end  of  1896,  twelve  thousand  had  fled  over  the  boundary  to  the 
Urmia  plain.  "We  may  safely  say  that  there  are  at  present  in  Turkey  56,000 
free  Mountain  Syrians  and  about  64,000  "uniate  "  Syrians  (Chaldeans)  in  com- 
munion with  Borne. 


42      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Kotchhannes  in  the  district  of  Julamerk  on  the  middle  Zab. 
The  separation  of  the  Nestorians  in  Turkish  territory  from 
those  in  Persia  has  hindered  the  ecclesiastical  development. 
These  Eastern  Syrians  of  the  Nestorian  Church  are  correctly 
named  Syrians,  for  they  have  retained  through  all  the  centuries 
of  their  isolation  the  Syrian  language,  not  only  as  the  dead 
language  of  an  obsolete  liturgy,  but  as  the  living  language  of 
daily  common  life.  This  language  is  the  sole  remaining 
branch  of  the  once  important  group  of  Syrian  languages  pos- 
sessing a  considerable  ecclesiastical  literature.  It  was  inter- 
esting information  that  the  American  missionaries  brought  to 
the  learned  world  of  the  Occident  in  1835,  when  they  dis- 
covered this  modern  Syrian  language.  Missionaries  and 
scholars  have  ever  since  vied  with  one  another  in  studying  the 
language  scientifically,  in  preparing  grammars  and  dictionaries 
and,  above  all,  in  creating  a  popular  literature  in  the  newly- 
discovered  tongue. 

More  disastrous  to  the  Catholic  Church  than  this  secession  of 
the  Nestorian  Church  of  the  East  Syrians,  was  the  rent  caused 
by  the  Monophysitic  controversy.  About  the  middle  of  the 
sixth  century,  just  as  the  Byzantine  emperors  thought  they  had 
overcome  this  difficulty,  a  powerful  advocate  of  Monophysitism 
arose  in  the  person  of  that  indefatigable  monk  and  bishop, 
Jacob  el  Baradai,  who  elevated  Monophysitism  to  an  actually 
dominant  position  among  the  creeds  of  the  eastern  portion  of 
the  Byzantine  Empire.  "  Fleet  of  foot  as  Asahel,  temperate, 
and  shunning  no  hardship,  for  well-nigh  forty  years  he  hurried, 
clad  as  a  beggar,  through  all  Asia  Minor  and  Egypt  as  far  as 
Byzantium  and  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  collect- 
ing and  encouraging  his  followers,  organizing  congregations, 
consecrating  bishops,  and  ordaining  priests  and  deacons. 
.  .  .  Doing  this  work  in  the  daytime,  and  travelling  on 
some  thirty,  forty  or  more  miles  in  the  night,  he  was  fortunate 
enough  to  escape  all  persecution  ;  and,  while  at  the  time  when 
he  began  his  work  Monophysitism  was  in  a  moribund  condition, 
Jacob — as  Bishop  John  of  Ephesus  tells  us — consecrated  two 
patriarchs,  twenty-seven  (eighty-seven  according  to  another 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    43 

reading)  bishops,  and  ordained  probably  100,000  priests  and 
deacons."  National  Churches  such  as  the  Armenian  and 
Egyptian,  adopted  the  Monophysitic  creed,  which  also  became 
dominant  in  Syria  and  Mesopotamia.  In  West  Syria  the 
Jacobites  are  to-day  the  sole  remnant  of  the  Monophysitic 
Syrian  Church.  They  number  no  more  than  about  80,000 
members.  Their  ecclesiastical  head,  the  Patriarch  of  Antioch, 
resides  in  the  monastery  of  Es  Safaran  near  Mardin.  Besides 
Mardinj  Diarbekr  and  Mosul,  there  are  considerable  congrega- 
tions in  the  village  of  Sadad,  on  the  road  from  Damascus  to 
Palmyra,  and  in  other  villages  of  this  neighbourhood. 

Even  more  serious  than  the  loss  of  the  Church  of  Western 
Syria  through  this  Monophysitic  schism  was  the  fact  that^jn 
consequence  of  these  conflicts,  separatistic  tendencies  gained 
a  hold  in  the  incoherent  provinces  of  the  East  Koman  Empire. 
Byzantium  with  its  Greek  ecclesiastical  culture  was  unpopular 
with  nations  having  a  language  and  ancient  civilization  of 
their  own.  Difference  of  opinion,  in  ecclesiastical  matters 
lent  impetus  to  centrifugal  tendencies.  It  was  under  the 
aegis  of  Monophysitic  activities  that  Egypt,  Syria,  and 
Armenia  broke  away  from  the  Catholic  Church.  By  this 
separation  they  preserved  the  distinctive  character  of  their 
national  culture,  their  native  language,  and,  in  part,  their 
original  ecclesiastical  customs.  But  they  had  to  pay  for  this 
with  their  separation  from  the  great  stream  of  church  life, 
and  with  the  consequent  ecclesiastical  and  dogmatic  impover- 
ishment. 

Of  these  separate  national  Churches,  formed  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Monophysitisra,  the  most  important  in  size  and  in- 
fluence is  the  Armenian.  This  is  the  most  ancient  national 
Christian  Church,  for  the  people  of  Armenia  embraced  Chris- 
tianity in  the  third  and  fourth  centuries.  This  was  brought 
to  pass  largely  through  the  wonderful  activity  of  Gregory 
the  Illuminator,  whence  the  Church  is  called  the  Gre- 
gorian Church.  Always  confined  within  the  limits  of  the 
Armenian  nation,  it  has  shared  for  centuries  the  sad  fortunes 
of  this  unhappy  people,  which  was  first  dragged  hither  and 


44      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

thither  between  the  rival  kingdoms  of  Persia  and  Byzantium, 
and  later  fell  an  easy  prey  to  advancing  Islam.  Their  chief 
misfortunes,  however,  the  Armenians  have  ever  owed  to  the 
savage  hordes  of  the  Kurds,  who  dwell  in  the  neighbouring 
wilds  to  the  south  and  east,  and  who  have  persistently 
opposed  every  civilizing  influence.  By  their  recent  superficial 
acceptance  of  Islam  these  Kurds  became  the  welcome  tool  of 
Turkish  officials  wherewith  to  harass  the  Armenians. 

These  Armenians  originally  inhabited  the  northeast  of 
Asia  Minor  and  the  fertile  plains  lying  between  Ararat  and 
the  Caucasus.  Since  the  province  of  Erivan  was  ceded  by 
Turkey  to  Kussia  at  the  Peace  of  Adrianople  in  1829,  about 
one-half  of  the  Armenians — say  a  million — have  been  under 
the  rule  of  the  Czar.  In  Kussian  Armenia  lies  Echmiadzin 
where  the  Armenian  Catholicos  resides.  The  other  half, 
1,144,000  (according  to  another  authority  even  as  many  as 
1,475,011)  dwell  in  Turkey,  where  their  hereditary  homes 
lie  in  the  northeastern  vilayets  of  Erzerum,  Yan,  Bitlis, 
Diarbekr  and  Mamuret  el  Aziz.  In  the  vilayets  of  Erivan 
and  Van  they  form  a  majority  of  the  population.  There 
they  are  for  the  most  part  diligent  and  quiet  agriculturists. 
But  the  Armenians  have  always  displayed  a  considerable 
power  of  expansion,  the  unhappy  conditions  of  their  home 
provinces,  as  well  as  their  native  intelligence  and  business 
capacity,  inducing  them  to  emigrate.  They  are  to  be  found 
in  large  numbers  in  all  the  cities  of  Western  Asia  Minor, 
while  in  Constantinople  there  are  97,000  (according  to  other 
estimates  200,000  or  even  215,000)  of  them.  Nearly  half  of 
the  Armenians  in  Turkey  live  outside  of  Armenia,  and  about 
100,000  reside  in  Northwestern  Persia. 

Like  the  Greek  Church,  the  Armenian  has  also  developed  a 
group  of  patriarchates,  which,  though  ecclesiastically  inde- 
pendent of  each  other,  nevertheless  stand  in  close  connection. 
Their  president  and  leader  is  the  Catholicos  of  Echmiadzin. 
This  diocese  includes  all  Armenians  in  Russia,  together 
with  those  scattered  in  Southern  Asia,  in  Europe  outside  of 
Turkey,  and  in  America.    Next  to  him,  and  almost  his  equal 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    45 

in  rank  and  power,  is  the  Armenian  Patriarch  of  Constanti- 
nople, who  has  no  less  than  forty-four  archbishops  and 
bishops  under  him,  and  who  is  the  ecclesiastical  head  of  nearly 
the  entire  Armenian  population  of  Asia  Minor  and  Turkey  in 
Europe.  The  other  three  Patriarchs,  those,  namely,  of 
Jerusalem,  of  Sis  in  Cilicia,  and  of  Aghtamar,  an  island  in 
the  Lake  of  Van,  occupy  an  inferior  position. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  there  has  also  been  a  divergence 
in  language  among  the  Armenians.  Only  a  few,  even  among 
the  clergy,  understand  the  difficult  classical  Armenian.  In 
modern  Armenian  there  are  two  dialects,  which  differ  con- 
siderably, the  eastern,  or  Ararat  dialect,  and  the  western. 
Many  have  altogether  given  up  the  use  of  their  native  tongue. 
In  many  parts  of  the  eastern  highlands  Kurdish  has  become 
the  prevalent  language.  Still  greater  is  the  number  of  those 
who  have  adopted  Turkish,  which,  however,  with  the  incon- 
sistency peculiar  to  many  Orientals,  who  retain  their  written 
characters  longer  than  their  language  itself,  they  write  in 
Armenian  script.  This  Armeno-Turkish  has  developed  into 
a  separate  mixed  dialect. 

In  Egypt  the  conservative  aborigines  had  a  deep-rooted  dis- 
like of  the  Greek  influence  spreading  from  Alexandria,  and  of 
the  rule  of  Byzantium  ;  and  this  opened  a  gulf  between  the 
orthodox  Patriarchate  of  Alexandria  and  the  National  Church 
of  Middle  and  Upper  Egypt,  which  seceded  to  Monophysitism. 
The  same  jealousy  blinded  the  eyes  of  the  ecclesiastical  and 
political  leaders  of  Egypt  to  such  an  extent  that  they  wel- 
comed the  Arabs,  who  flooded  their  country  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Amr,  as  their  deliverers  from  the  Byzantine  yoke. 
But  during  the  centuries  of  ever-increasing  Muhammadan 
tyranny,  they  found  that  they  were  being  chastised  no  longer 
with  whips,  but  with  scorpions.  By  far  the  greater  part  of 
the  Egyptian  people— 8,971,761  out  of  a  total  of  9,734,405— 
has  become  Muhammadan  ;  but  all  the  more  obstinately  does 
the  faithful  remnant  cleave  to  the  venerable,  ancient  Church. 
These  latter  are  called  Kopts,  and,  as  they  have  in  this  name 
retained  the  ancient  name  of  their  country — E-gypt, — so  also 


46      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

their  appearance,  particularly  that  of  the  children,  shows  at 
once  that  they  are  the  pure  descendants  of  the  aboriginal 
Egyptians,  whose  kings  and  queens  look  down  from  their 
granite  statues  with  similar  faces  upon  the  poverty-stricken 
fellaheen  living  in  their  mud  huts. 

In  Lower  Egypt  they  are  to  be  found  in  considerable  num- 
bers only  in  Cairo  (26,440),  and  Alexandria  (5,059) ;  in  Middle 
Egypt,  thousands  of  them  live  in  all  six  provinces  ;  but  they 
are  most  numerous  in  Upper  Egypt— in  Minyah,  92,223  ;  in 
Assiut,  161,686 ;  in  Girgeh,  109,777 ;  and  in  Kenneh,  52,802. 
In  these  four  districts  are  crowded  together  426,488  out  of 
the  592,374  Kopts  of  the  ancient  creed.  In  the  Assiut  district 
they  form  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  population.  Ecclesiastic- 
ally dependent  on  the  Koptic  Church  from  the  earliest  times, 
is  the  Abyssinian  Church,  numerically  the  largest  Oriental 
Church  extant,  having  a  membership  of  about  three  and  one- 
half  million  souls ;  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  religiously  and 
morally  the  most  degraded,  barbarous  and  heathenish.  The 
spiritual  head,  the  Abuna  (our  father),  or  Abba  Salama 
(father  of  peace),  is  appointed  by  the  Koptic  Patriarch. 
Apart  from  this,  it  is  a  state  Church,  the  forms  of  which  bear 
witness  to  the  fact  that  it  was  organized  under  the  despotic 
rule  of  violent  kings. 

A  statistical  table  of  the  Oriental  Churches  in  Turkey  and 
Northeast  Africa  shows  that 


The  Greek  Orthodox  Church  numbers  .   .  2,400,000 

The  Armenian 1,250,000 

TheNestorian 100,000 

The  Jacobite 80,000 

TheKoptio 592,374 

The  Abyssinian 3,500,000 

7,922,374  or,  in  round  num- 
bers, 8  millions. 

4-     The  Roman  Propaganda 
No  clear    conception  of  these    ancient   Churches  of  the 
Orient  can   be  gained,  unless  those  churches  and  parts  of 
churches  which  the  Koman  propaganda  has  absorbed  in  the 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    47 

course  of  centuries,  are  taken  into  due  consideration.  For, 
curiously  enough,  those  parts  of  the  ancient  Churches  which 
have  been  "  united "  with  Rome,  have  not  as  a  rule  been 
assimilated  with  the  Roman  Church  in  rites  and  church  polity. 
On  the  contrary,  they  have  retained,  in  greater  or  less  degree, 
their  ecclesiastical  peculiarities,  their  liturgies,  and  sometimes 
their  ecclesiastical  language.  They  occupy,  therefore,  a  sepa- 
rate position  within  the  Roman  Church  as  "  Churches  of  the 
Oriental  Rites."  ^ 

First  and  foremost  among  these  is  the  Maronite  Church.  The 
Maronite  nation  occupies  the  southern  slopes  of  the  Lebanon, 
from  Tripoli  in  the  north  to  Tyre  and  the  sea  of  Galilee  in 
the  south — an  area  of  about  3,000  square  miles.  It  is  uncer- 
tain whether  they  were  originally  a  political  nation  or  a  Chris- 
tian sect.  They  number  about  320,000  souls  in  a  pretty  com- 
pact mass,  especially  in  the  districts  of  Kesrwan  and  Bsherreh 
near  Tripoli,  where  they  form  the  main  part  of  the  population.^ 
Their  name  is  derived  from  a  monastery  of  St.  Maron  (our 
lord)  or  Mari  (my  lord)  in  the  Lebanon.  Their  ecclesiastical 
history  is  somewhat  wrapped  in  darkness,  but  it  appears  cer- 
tain that  they  joined  the  Monotheletic  party  in  the  eighth 
century.  During  the  time  of  the  Crusades  (in  1182)  they  went 
over  to  the  Roman  Church,  but  whether  only  their  leaders  at 
first,  and  the  mass  of  the  people  in  later  centuries,  is  not  to 
be  ascertained.  This  is  the  only  case  of  the  seceding  of  an 
entire  Oriental  Church  to  Rome.  Strangely  enough  we  have 
only  the  following  authentic,  and  yet  much  contested,  report 

*  Literature  of  the  subject:  J.  S.  Assemani,  Bibliotheka  orientalis,  Rome,  1819- 
1828 ;  Le  Quien,  Oriens  Christianus  (critically  inexact  and  often  hasty)  ; 
Silbernagel,  Verfassung  und  gegenwdrtiger  Bestand  ssemtlicher  Kirchen  des  Orients, 
Landahut,  1865 ;  W.  Koehler,  Die  kathol.  Kirchen  des  Morgenlandes,  Beitrsege 
zum  Verfassungsrecht  der  sogen.  uniert-oriental.  Kirehen,  Darmstadt,  1898  ;  espe- 
cially also  the  articles  in  Wetzer  und  W^elte'a  Kathol.  Kirehenlexicon. 

''The  figures  of  Roman  missionary  statistics  are  not  very  safe.  The  most 
competent  sources  differ  considerably.  We  have  to  content  ourselves  with 
placing  them  side  by  side  and  striking  an  average.  Werner  gives  the  number  of 
Maronites  as  278,000  (OrMs  terrarum  cath.),  while  Miss.  Catholicse,  1907,  reckons 
314,600;  Streit,  kath.  Missions  Atlas,  341,000  ;  the  Maronite  Archbishop  Debs, 
300,000. 


48      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

of  William  of  Tyre,  the  historian  of  the  Crusades,  concerning 
this  important  event  in  Church  History  (Bongart,  Gest.  Dei 
;per  Francos,  I,  xxii,  cap.  8.  Realenc.  3d  Ed.,  xii,  p.  358) :  "  In 
that  year  (1182),  a  Syrian  nation  {natio  qucsdam  Syrorum)  liv- 
ing in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  city  of  Byblus  in  Phoenicia  at 
the  Lebanon  suffered  a  great  change  in  its  condition  {plurimam 
;passa  est  mutationem).  For  after  they  had  followed  for  nearly 
five  hundred  years  the  false  teaching  of  a  certain  heresiarch, 
named  Maron,  from  whom  they  derived  the  name  Maronites, 
and  had  separated  themselves  from  the  Church  of  Believ- 
ers, retaining  their  special  forms  of  worship,  they  now,  led  by 
divine  inspiration,  came  to  the  Latin  Patriarch,  Aimerich  of 
Antioch,  renouncing  their  error  and  accepting  the  orthodox 
faith  and,  with  their  Patriarch  and  certain  bishops,  joined  the 
Eoman  Church  again.  There  were  more  than  40,000  of  them, 
all  brave  men,  practiced  in  war,  who  did  good  service  in  the 
war  with  the  Saracens."  Ever  since  that  time  Rome  has 
endeavoured  to  effect  the  spiritual  assimilation  of  this  proud, 
warlike  mountain  race.  The  Synods  held  in  the  monastery 
of  Kannobin  in  1596,  and  in  the  nunnery  of  Luweiz  in  Kesr- 
wan  in  1736,  were  important  and  successful  steps  in  this  policy 
of  unification  which  was  pursued  for  centuries.  At  present 
the  Maronites,  apart  from  the  use  of  the  Syrian  ecclesiastical 
language  and  the  enjoyment  of  some  ancient  national  privi- 
leges, are  thoroughly  Romanized. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  Maronite  Church,  Rome  has  ever, 
especially  since  the  time  of  the  Crusades,  made  it  a  point  to 
increase  her  influence  over  all  the  Oriental  Churches,  and 
eventually  to  win  over  to  herself  larger  or  smaller  portions 
of  them.  The  story  of  this  wooing  is  an  interesting  and 
checkered,  though  not  very  edifying,  chapter  in  church  history. 
Rome  often  thought  she  had  succeeded  in  bringing  this  or 
that  Church  into  union  with  herself,  only  to  be  disappointed 
at  the  very  moment  of  apparent  success.  It  is  beyond  our 
province  to  follow  this  story  in  detail.  We  content  ourselves 
with  giving  a  review  of  her  propaganda  as  it  exists  at  the 
present  time,  only  here  and  there  adding  historical  data  by 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    49 

way  of  needful  explanation.  The  task  is  not  easy.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  there  are  a  good  many  statistics  of  her  ad- 
herents in  the  modern  Roman  missionary  literature,  it  is 
difficult  to  arrive  at  definite  results  for  the  reason  that  in  most 
of  these  statistical  tables  no  careful  distinction  is  made  between 
adherents  who  have  immigrated  from  Europe  and  adherents 
who  have  actually  been  won  over  from  the  Oriental 
Churches. 

In  this  way  the  number  of  converts  sometimes  seems  to  be 
greater  than  it  actually  is.  Just  to  mention  one  case.  Die 
Katholischen  Missioneii  (1907)  estimates  the  membership  of  the 
three  "  uniate  "  Roman  Koptic  bishoprics  at  20,250  souls,  in 
addition  to  the  100,184  in  the^two  other  Roman  dioceses  of  the 
same  country.  But  according  to  the  latest  official  census  (1900), 
there  were  only  4,630  Kopts  "  united "  with  Rome,  besides 
46,504  Austrian,  French,  Italian  and  Spanish  Roman  Catholics, 
making  a  grand  total  of  56,343.  However  3^ou  may  manipulate 
the  figures,  you  can  arrive  at  no  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
problem. 

The  Orthodox  Greek  Churchy  which  is  by  far  the  most  in- 
fluential in  European  Turkey  and  Asia  Minor,  embraces  people 
of  various  nationalities  and  tongues,  who  have  met  the  prop- 
aganda of  the  Roman  Church  in  different  ways.  In  Austria- 
Hungary  and  Roumania  Rome  has  won  great  victories  ;  the 
Church  of  the  Grgeco-Roumanian  rite  numbers  1,090,000 
souls ;  that  of  the  Graeco-Ruthenian  rite,  3,524,000.  If  we 
further  take  into  our  calculation  the  countries,  or  provinces, 
of  Bosnia,  Montenegro  and  Albania,  in  which  Rome  has  had 
for  ages  a  membership  of  330,000,  13,000  and  131,000  respect- 
ively— in  all  4Y4,400 — it  is  evident  that  she  is  in  a  strong 
position  in  the  north  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  On  the  other 
hand  she  has  almost  entirely  failed  in  her  efforts  to  proselytize 
among  the  Orthodox  Greek  Churches  in  the  southern  part  of 
the  Peninsula  and  in  the  Greek  parts  of  Asia  Minor,  though 
she  may  have  had  temporary  successes.  The  Servians,  the 
Bulgarians  and  the  Greeks  have  generally  assumed  an  attitude 
of  resistance.    In  Servia,  apart  from  8,200  Catholic  immigrants, 


^o      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Kome  has  but  2,200  "  uniate  "  Servians.  Among  the  Bulga- 
rians, a  nation  which  from  the  earliest  times  Kome  has  most 
persistently  pursued,  it  seemed  as  if  she  were  to  reap  a  great 
harvest  in  the  critical  years  1860-1870,  when  the  Bulgarian 
Church  tore  itself  away  from  the  ecumenical  patriarch  of 
Constantinople.  But  when,  in  1870,  an  independent  Bulgarian 
exarchate  was  instituted  with  Russian  help,  the  masses  re- 
turned to  the  national  Church.  Rome  retained  in  the  dioceses 
of  Sofia,  Rustchuk  and  Philippopolis  but  33,780  members,  the 
majority  of  whom  were  Latin  immigrants.  The  National 
Greek  Church,  proud  of  her  great  ecclesiastical  and  political 
past,  has  ever  offered  an  obstinate  resistance  to  attempts  at 
proselytizing.  Here,  too,  Rome  has  gained  but  little  ground. 
The  Latin  dioceses  of  Constantinople  and  Smyrna  number 
respectively,  it  is  true,  46,000  and  15,500  Roman  Catholics, 
but  we  are  not  informed  how  many  of  these  are  "  uniate " 
Greeks.  According  to  Die  Katholischen  Missionen,  the 
"pure  Greek  rite"  has  only  180  "uniate"  Greeks  in  the 
"Mission  of  Malgara,"  apart  from  49,000  Greeks  who  had 
emigrated  to  Italy  and  had  there  become  Romanized.  Roman 
missionaries  in  the  little  town  of  Peramos  on  the  Sea  of 
Marmora  have  made  several  thousand  converts  of  people  who 
had  quarrelled  with  their  ecclesiastical  authorities  about  the 
ownership  of  monastic  property. 

The  Syrian  Ckurch  has  not  been  so  steadfast.  Rome  had 
here  the  double  advantage  that  the  Arabic  language,  at 
present  the  national  language,  was  formerly  despised  by  the 
Greek-speaking  hierarchy,  and  that  the  "uniate"  Maronite 
Church  was  close  by.  She  succeeded  in  winning  over  138,200 
Arab  Greeks,  and  organized  them  into  a  Church  with  the 
"  GraBco-Melchitic  rite."  The  name  "Melchites"  (from  the 
Hebrew  melek— king)  was  applied  in  olden  times  to  the  ad- 
herents of  the  imperial  State  Church  in  contradistinction  to 
the  independent  Monophysitic  Churches  in  the  provinces. 

The  battle  has  swayed  hither  and  thither  in  the  rest  of  the 
Oriental  Churches.  More  than  once  Rome  believed  she  had  com- 
pletely captured  the  Armenian  Church  ;  but  again  and  again 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    51 

this  people,  proud  of  their  ancient  nationality  and  ecclesiastical 
traditions,  broke  away.  Nevertheless  there  are  about  125,000 
Armenians  in  "  union  "  with  Rome,  or  ten  per  cent,  of  that 
part  of  the  nation  that  lives  in  Turkey — a  by  no  means  des- 
picable result.  Rome's  intrigues  proved  more  ruinous  to 
the  small  Nestorian  Church.  The  split  on  the  election  of  a 
patriarch  in  1551,  when  one  of  the  candidates,  Johannes 
Sullaka,  threw  himself  into  the  arms  of  Rome,  hoping  thus  to 
secure  himself  in  his  chair,  gave  Rome  a  firm  footing,  a  posi- 
tion she  has  retained  in  spite  of  occasional  reverses.  In  1684 
the  Pope  ventured  for  the  first  time  to  appoint  a  special 
Syrian-Chaldean  Patriarch,  and  since  1778  the  subjection  of 
that  portion  of  the  Nestorian  Church  existing  in  the  Meso- 
potamian  plain  of  Mosul  and  in  the  adjacent  hill-tracts  has 
been  completed.  They  are  called  "  Chaldean  Christians,"  a 
name  first  given  by  the  Latin  missionaries.  The  Porte  in 
1843  officially  recognized  the  Chaldean  Church  as  a  separate 
religious  community  in  Turkey.  There  are  some  64,000 
members,*  as  compared  with  100,000  Nestorians  who  have 
adhered  to  their  ancient  Church.  Among  the  latter,  the  Roman 
Church  has  recently  reported  great  progress  and  accessions 
on  a  large  scale.  Neither  has  the  Jacobite  Church  been  able 
to  withstand  this  "  uniting  "  policy  of  Rome.  After  several 
attempts,  a  Roman-Syrian  patriarchate  was  founded  in  1783 
with  its  seat  in  Mardin ;  and  although  the  Patriarch  retired 
thence  before  the  attacks  of  the  faithful  remnant  of  the 
Jacobites  into  the  Lebanon,  yet  the  Catholic  Syrian  Church 
was  recognized  by  the  Porte  in  1830  as  a  separate  religious 
body,  and  since  1854  a  Catholic  patriarch  has  resided  in  Mar- 
din.  The  20,000  Jacobites  "  united  "  with  Rome  form  a  fifth 
of  the  West  Syrian  Church  of  to-day. 

It  is  only  possible  to  guess  the  exact  number  of  Roman 
Catholic  Christians  in  the  Holy  Land  ;  and  how  many  of  these 
are  Latin  immigrants,  and  how  many  native  converts,  it  is  im- 

*  Among  these  are  many  of  the  best  educated  of  the  people.  Some  separated 
from  Rome  in  1870  in  consequence  of  the  Vatican  Council;  but  Archbishop 
Hassan  succeeded  in  chaining  them  to  Rome  again. 


52      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

possible  to  say.  Rev.  Ludwig  Schneller,  D.  D.,  in  a  laborious 
enquiry  {Bote  aus  Zion,  1905,  pp.  49  ff.)  estimates  them  at 
13,500 ;  Streit,  15,000 ;  Die  Katholischen  3fissionen  gives 
17,000.  The  latter  asserts  that,  while  there  were  only  4,000 
in  1847,  there  are  now  17,000,  a  meagre  result  considering  the 
efforts  which  the  Roman  Church  has  concentrated  on  the  Holy 
Land  during  the  last  five  decades,  and  the  number  of  Latin 
immigrants  there. 

Egypt  Rome  has  pursued  with  most  persistent  ardour.  Yet, 
after  many  apparent  successes,  the  Kopts,  who  are  obstinately 
attached  to  their  traditions,  have  again  and  again  slipped  be- 
tween the  fingers  of  Rome.  Leo  XIII  greatly  desired  to  effect 
a  "  union,"  and  he  admonished  the  Catholic  Church  to  make 
special  efforts  to  do  so.  Towards  the  close  of  the  seventies,  he 
sent  French  Jesuits  to  assist  the  Franciscans,  who  had  for  ages 
laboured  there.  In  1886  he  entrusted  the  Apostolic  Prefecture 
of  the  Nile  Delta  to  the  Mission  college  at  Lyons.  During  the 
last  quarter  of  the  century  there  arrived  a  host  of  new  agencies 
— the  Christian  School  Brothers,  the  Brethren  of  the  Holy  Ga- 
briel, the  Sisters  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  the  Sisters  of  Mercy  and 
a  great  number  of  others  from  France,  Germany  and  even 
Canada. 

In  1895  a  Catholic  patriarchate  for  Egypt  was  founded  by 
the  Constitution  motu  propria.  The  results  were  scanty  ;  the 
census  of  1900  showed  that  there  were  only  4,630  Kopts  in 
"  union  "  with  Rome.  Latterly  the  Roman  missionary  maga- 
zines have  recorded  that,  by  a  popular  movement,  15,000  Kopts 
have  seceded  to  Rome ;  this  movement  seems  at  present  to  have 
come  to  an  end.^ 

In  Abyssinia  the  Catholic  Church  thought  it  had  gained 
one  of  its  greatest  victories,  when,  in  1603,  after  a  fearful 
massacre  of  the  opposing  party,  the  Negus,  Susneus,  whom 
the  Jesuits  had  helped  to  enter  a  league  with  Portugal,  de- 
clared the  Roman  Church  to  be  the  State  Church,  and  the 
Jesuit  Alfonso  Mendez  held  an  entry  into  the  capital  as  its 

*  According  to  Father  Krose  there  are  77, 820  Eoman  Catholics  in  Egypt,  of  whom 
45,000  are  of  European  blood.    Of  the  rest  20,250  are  said  to  be  of  the  Eoptio  rite. 


Tlie  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    53 

pati'iarch,  consecrated  by  the  Pope.  But  in  1634,  the  Roman 
archbishop  was  obliged  to  leave  with  all  the  Jesuits,  and  the 
ancient  Church  was  restored.  When,  in  1830,  the  ports  of  the 
country  were  partially  thrown  open  again.  Catholic  mission- 
aries of  various  orders  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  their  often 
interrupted  attempts  run  parallel  with  the  vain  efforts  of  Prot- 
estant missionary  societies.  Latterly,  in  1904  and  1905,  the  last 
Catholic  missionaries — the  Capuchins  in  the  South  and  the 
French  Lazarists  in  the  North — were  expelled.  In  Abyssinia 
itself,  the  Catholic  Church  numbers  only  3,000  or  4,000  "  uniate  " 
Ab}>)ssinians,  though  in  Italian  Erythrea  just  outside  the  Ab- 
yssinian boundary  there  is  a  more  favourable  state  of  things 
for  Catholic  Missions,  there  being  here  about  15,000  members. 
The  adherents  of  the  Churches  "united"  with  Rome  may  be 
thus  tabulated : 

Albania 131,400 

The  Dioceses  of  Philippopolis  and  Constantinople 50,900 

Smyrna 15,000 

Syrian  Melchites 138,200 

Maronites      320,000 

Chaldean  Church  (Nestoriana)      56,000 

Armenians 125,000 

Uniate  Jacobites      20,000 

Palestine 15,000 

Egypt 56,343 

Abyssinia  and  Erythrea 18,000 

Total  945,843* 

^  Since  this  book  was  written  there  have  appeared  new,  accurate  and  pains- 
taking statistics  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Missions  by  H.  A.  Krose,  S.  J.  (KatJio- 
lische  Missionastatistik,  1908).  According  to  this  author  there  are  at  present 
Roman  Catholics : 

Armenians  (Uniate) 72,292 

Syrian  Melchites      138,733 

Maronites      284,600 

Uniate  Nestoriana  (Chaldeans) 63,950 

Uniate  Jacobites     20,200 

Members  of  the  Oriental  Rites 579,775 

Roman  Catholics  of  the  Latin  Rite 50,022 

629,797 

Albania,  Philippopolis,  Constantinople,  Egypt,  Abyssinia,  and  Erythrea 
(altogether  256,643  in  our  statistics)  are  not  included  in  this  table.  In  spite  of 
this  reduction  Krose  has  but  about  60,000  less  than  our  table. 


54      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

If  we  add  this  total  to  the  eight  million  adherents  of  the 
ancient  Oriental  Churches,  we  find  that  nearly  nine  million 
Christians  have  remained  faithful  to  Christianity  under  the 
Turkish  yoke.  When  we  consider  the  thirteen  centuries  of 
ruthless  repression  which  these  Christians  have  suffered,  and 
vrhen  we  remember  that  almost  all  those  parts  of  Turkey,  the 
population  of  which  was  preponderatingly  Christian,  have,  in 
the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century,  been  freed  from  the 
Turkish  yoke,  so  that  their  Christian  population  is  excluded 
from  these  statistics,  it  is  surely  an  honourable  testimony  to 
the  fidelity  of  these  Churches,  that  so  many  have  remained 
steadfast. 

But  not  only  from  this  point  of  view  is  this  short  description 
of  the  Eoman  propaganda  of  interest  here.  Of  greater  impor- 
tance is  it,  that  we  thus  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  most  pow- 
erful and  dangerous  competitor  of  the  Protestant  endeavours, 
which  are  to  engage  our  attention  in  these  pages.  For  Rome 
is  a  rival  without  consideration  for  the  rights  and  feelings  of 
the  other  party,  and  sees  in  Protestantism  an  intruder  and 
deadly  enemy,  which  must  be  opposed  at  any  cost,  whether 
by  intrigue  and  calumny  or  even  by  violence.  For  the  Roman 
propaganda  judges  rightly  that  wherever  a  population  is  per- 
meated by  the  Protestant  spirit,  the  prospect  of  "  union " 
with  Rome  is  hopeless.  And  this  "  union,"  i.  e.,  ecclesiastical 
absorption  of  "  schismatic  "  Churches,  is  the  consistent  aim  of 
the  Roman  Church. 

This  Romish  competition  is  a  threat  to  the  Protestant  mis- 
sions for  two  reasons,  {a)  First,  on  account  of  the  astounding 
growth  of  Roman  missionary  activity  during  the  last  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  We  take  Palestine  as  a  striking  ex- 
ample of  this. 

The  "  custody  "  of  the  Holy  Land  had  been  entrusted  to  the 
Franciscan  order  ever  since  the  time  of  the  Crusades.  The 
Franciscans  represented  and  guarded  Roman  interests  in  the 
holy  places,  and  looked  after  the  few  scattered  thousands  of 
Roman  Christians.  In  1847  Pius  IX  founded  a  Latin  pa- 
triarchate in  Jerusalem,  and  since  that  time  Roman  Orders  of 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    ^^ 

the  most  varied  types  have  flocked  into  the  country.  Some 
of  these  carry  on  direct  missionary  work,  e.  g.,  the  Phihstian 
Mission,  1879,  the  German  Lazarists  and  the  Benedictine  monks 
and  nuns.  Others  care  for  the  holy  places,  maintain  hospices 
for  pilgrims  or  open  schools  for  the  native  Catholic  popula- 
tion ;  e.  g.,  the  Carmelites  in  Haifa,  the  Sisters  of  Zion,  the 
White  Fathers,  the  Dominicans,  the  Assumptionists,  the 
Lazarists,  the  Salesians  of  Dom  Bosco,  the  Brothers  of  Chris- 
tian Schools,  the  Sisters  of  Nazareth,  the  Sisters  of  St.  Joseph, 
the  Eosecrucian  Sisters,  the  Benedictine  Nuns  and  the  Amer- 
ican Sisters.  There  are  also  special  hospices  for  German, 
French  and  Austrian  Catholics.  Other  orders  and  brother- 
hoods do  deeds  of  mercy  in  hospitals  and  dispensaries  ;  e.  g.^ 
the  Sisters  of  St.  Vincent  and  the  Brothers  of  Mercy.  Some 
again  lead  the  contemplative  life,  as  the  Trappists  in  Latrun, 
the  priests  of  the  Heart  of  Jesus  in  Betharram  near  Bethle- 
hem, the  Passionists  in  Bethany,  the  French  Lazarists  in  Jeru- 
salem and  the  Carmelite  Nuns.  There  are  fully  thirty  Orders, 
Brotherhoods,  and  Associations  that  have  thus  streamed  into 
the  Holy  Land  since  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  Kev.  L. 
Schneller,  D.  D.  {Bote  aus  Zion,  1905,  p.  60),  counts  from  350 
to  400  members  of  male  orders  and  priests  in  twenty-four 
monasteries,  from  250  to  300  members  of  female  orders  in 
twenty  convents,  eighteen  hospices,  six  higher  schools,  forty- 
six  day  schools,  sixteen  orphanages  with  seven  hundred  orphans, 
four  industrial  schools,  five  hospitals  {Die  Katholischen 
Missionen  35,  pp.  172, 195  ;  Bote  aus  Zion,  1905,  p.  49).  Com 
pared  with  this  array,  the  number  of  Protestant  mission 
workers  is  pitifully  small.  Though  nowhere  else  so  strong 
as  in  Palestine,  yet  nearly  everywhere  the  Roman  mission 
workers  are  multiplying  in  the  Oriental  mission  fields. 
Protestants  can  nowhere  compete  with  them  numerically. 

(5)  The  competition  of  the  Roman  Church  is  severe,  in  the 
second  place,  because  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  the 
Roman  propaganda  has  been  devoting  all  its  energy  to  the 
hitherto  neglected  cause  of  primary  and  higher  education.  It 
has  realized  the  fact  that  the  strength  of  Protestant  missions 


56      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

lies  in  their  schools,  and  is  determined  to  outdistance  the 
Protestants  in  this  respect  also.  Large  sums  are  expended  in 
enlarging  and  developing  the  "  Catholic  Missionary  Univer- 
sity," the  St.  Joseph's  University  in  Beirut.  Chair  after  chair 
is  being  founded,  even  in  such  subjects  as  epigraphy,  the  com- 
parative study  of  Semitic  languages,  and  the  Ethiopian  lan- 
guage and  literature.  The  university  possesses  a  very  com- 
plete and  valuable  library.  In  addition  large  colleges  are 
being  constantly  founded  to  compete  with  the  colleges  of  Prot- 
estant missions.  Thus  the  Capuchin  college  in  Mesereh  (in  the 
province  of  Mamuret  el  Aziz)  is  the  rival  of  the  Euphrates 
College  of  the  American  Board  in  Kharput,  the  Jesuit  college 
in  Tokat  competes  with  the  Anatolia  college  of  the  American 
Board  in  Marsovan,  and  the  Jesuit  college  of  the  Holy 
Trinity  in  Cairo,  with  the  United  Presbyterian  college  in 
Assiut.  As  the  Koman  missionaries  charge  very  small  fees,  or 
none  at  all,  in  their  well-fitted  colleges,  hundreds  of  students 
are  flocking  to  them.  Protestant  schools  and  colleges  will 
feel  the  strain  of  this  competition  still  more  keenly  when  the 
Koman  institutions,  now  in  part  in  a  state  of  development, 
shall  have  been  fully  equipped.  It  is  to  be  observed  how  dil- 
igently the  Roman  Church  copies  the  Protestant  methods  in 
order  to  gain  a  position  of  superiority  in  the  East. 

5.  The  Russian  Church 
We  have  considered  the  Oriental  Churches  with  their  pe- 
culiarities and  the  untiring  Roman  propagandism.  A  third 
factor  must  be  taken  into  account,  if  we  are  to  appreciate  all 
the  complicated  and  militant  forces  that  hinder  the  Protestant 
missions,  namely  the  undermining  work  of  the  Russian 
Church,  secret,  yet  almost  everywhere  active,  and  in  a  meas- 
ure successful.  It  is  well  known  that  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  Russia's  fixed  political  purposes  is  to  gain  free 
access,  by  way  of  the  Golden  Horn,  to  the  great  highroad  of 
world  commerce  running  through  the  Mediterranean.  This  is 
the  centre  of  Russian  policy  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula  as  in 
Asiatic  Turkey.     In  the  Balkan  Peninsula  Russia  has  had  a 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    57 

congenial  task  in  attaching  to  herself  the  large  and  vigorous 
Slavic  nations  there  by  means  of  the  ideal  of  Panslavism,  and 
by  encouraging  their  desire  for  political  and  ecclesiastical 
independence.  In  Asiatic  Turkey  she  has  won  a  foothold 
through  the  ancient  Churches.  Closely  related  to  the  Eus- 
sian  Church  in  creed  and  ritual,  and  ardently  desiring  that 
the  Turkish  yoke  be  removed,  or  at  least  be  made  more  endur- 
able, it  is  no  wonder  that  the  Greek  Orthodox  Churches  in 
Asia  Minor  set  their  hopes  on  the  two-headed  eagle  of  Russia. 
In  Syria  and  Palestine  Eussia  has  attempted  to  widen  the 
breach  between  the  Greek-speaking  hierarchy  and  the  Arabic- 
speaking  congregations  by  encouraging  the  latter  to  demand 
the  use  of  Arabic  in  churches  and  schools  in  place  of  the 
Greek  language  which  has  been  forced  upon  them,  thus 
awakening  their  consciousness  of  being  not  Greeks  but  Syrian 
Arabs.  Divide  et  impera  !  To  this  end  Eussia  maintains  in 
Syria  and  Palestine  101  schools  with  10,430  pupils  and  363 
teachers,  of  whom  twenty-three  are  Eussians.  Eussia  has  also 
a  hand  in  the  nomination  of  the  Patriarchs  of  Antioch  and 
Jerusalem,  and  usually  succeeds  in  getting  her  candidates 
elected.  In  Egypt  Eussia  even  succeeded  in  securing  the  elec. 
tion  of  a  native  of  Eussia,  Nicanor,  as  Patriarch  of  Alexandria 
(1866-1870).  The  Negus  of  Abyssinia  himself  begins  to  regard 
the  Eussian  Church  as  most  closely  related  to  the  Abyssinian, 
in  spite  of  the  Monophysitism  of  the  latter,  and  is  meditating 
union  with  her.  There  is,  however,  no  immediate  prospect 
of  the  fulfillment  of  this  plan  in  spite  of  the  endless  missions 
and  expeditions  which  are  sent  backwards  and  forwards.  In 
Armenia  the  influence  which  Eussia  exercises  on  the  nation 
by  means  of  its  Church  has  been  greatly  increased  by  the  fact 
that  half  of  Armenia,  including  Echmiadzin,  the  venerable 
seat  of  the  Armenian  Catholicos,  has  already  passed  into  Eus- 
sia's  hands.  For  the  Armenian  Church  it  would  be  a  disas- 
trous triumph  of  state  and  church  policy,  if  Eussia  should 
succeed  in  incorporating  the  rest  of  the  Armenian  provinces, 
namely  the  vilayets  of  Erzerum,  Yan,  Bitlis  and  Diarbekr,  in 
her  territory,  and  should  then  assimilate  the  entire  Armenian 


58      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Church.  We  shall  have  later  to  deal  with  the  Kussian  annex- 
ation of  the  Nestorian  Church  in  Northwestern  Persia.  In 
this  account  of  the  ceaseless  activity  of  the  Roman  Church 
aiming  at  ecclesiastical  union,  and  of  the  Russian  State  stri- 
ving for  political  aggrandizement,  we  have  sketched  the  dark 
background  of  Protestant  mission  work  in  the  Near  East. 

6.  The  Position  of  Christians  under  TurTcish  Rule^ 

The  position  of  Christians  under  Turkish  rule  has  varied  at 
different  times  and  in  different  places.  Especially  in  the  times 
immediately  following  the  Turkish  conquest,  when  the  Muham- 
madan  power  did  not  feel  sufficiently  established,  or  in  dis- 
tricts in  which  there  was  a  large  Christian  majority  evidently 
in  a  position  to  claim  a  certain  amount  of  protection  from  the 
government,  the  lot  of  the  Christians  was  tolerable.  For  in- 
stance, in  the  Monophysitic  Church  in  Egypt  and  in  the  Nes- 
torian  Church  in  Persia  conditions  were  so  satisfactory,  that 
they  enjoyed  a  period  of  prosperity.  In  all  Muhammadan 
lands  the  Christians  enjoyed  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  re- 
ligious liberty  and  political  representation,  since  their  rulers 
were  well  aware  that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  direct  the 
affairs  of  the  Christian  communities.  Compared  with  the 
autocratic  ecclesiastical  despotism  under  which  the  Orthodox 
Greek  Church  had  groaned,  when  subject  to  the  Christian 
emperors  of  Byzantium,  this  measure  of  autonomy  in  such  mat- 
ters as  marriage  laws,  and  laws  of  inheritance,  was  a  distinct 
gain.  To  be  sure  only  the  Greek  and  Armenian  Churches  en- 
joyed these  privileges  to  the  full,  because  the  Osmanli  Sultan, 
Muhammad  II,  after  the  conquest  of  Constantinople  in  1453, 
appointed  the  Orthodox  Greek  Patriarch  as  "  Official  Admin- 
istrator of  all  orthodox  subjects  in  the  Turkish  Empire,"  and 
the  Armenian  Patriarch  (in  1461)  as  "  Head  of  all  the  Chris- 
tians in  the  Orient,"  *.  e.,  of  all  non-"  orthodox "  Christians. 
The  rest  of  the  Christian  Churches  had  to  be  content  to  be 

^Thia  paragraph  was  written  before  the  24th  of  July,  1908,  when  the  constitu- 
tion was  granted  by  the  Sultan.    Cf.  Chap.  Ill,  7. 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    59 

represented  by  these  two  dignitaries  until,  beginning  in  1831, 
the  Porte  granted  them  one  after  another  the  right  to  manage 
their  own  affairs.  Then,  too,  through  the  centuries  the  men- 
tal elasticity  of  the  Christian  population,  combined  with  the 
political  backwardness  of  the  Muhammadans  who  had  come 
to  power  by  brute  force,  tended  to  raise  Christian  families  into 
positions  of  influence  at  court.  Thus  there  were  Christian 
physicians  and  scholars  at  the  court  of  the  Abbassides  in  Bag- 
dad, and  great  merchants  and  bankers,  "  Fanariots,"  in  Con- 
stantinople. And  the  influential  position  of  such  men  benefited 
the  Christian  Churches  in  many  ways. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  Christians  were  oppressed,  the 
yoke  becoming  more  and  more  galling  from  century  to  century. 
Muhammad  had  adopted  no  fixed  attitude  towards  the  Chris- 
tians. As  long  as  he  hoped  to  gain  them  over  to  his  own  religion, 
he  showed  them  favour.  Disappointed  in  this,  he  warned  his 
followers  to  have  no  communion  with  them.  In  Sura  IX :  28 
he  says  :  "  Oh,  ye  Christians,  only  those  are  unclean,  who  asso- 
ciate other  Gods  (Christ,  Mary  I)  with  Allah  " ;  again  in  Sura 
III :  27 :  "Let  not  the  Faithful  enter  into  friendship  with  the  In- 
fidels in  preference  to  the  Faithful  "  ;  again  in  Sura  III :  108  ' 
"  The  wrath  of  Allah  shall  smite  them  (the  Christians),  poverty 
shall  be  their  lot,  because  they  have  not  believed  the  signs  of 
God  (wrought  by  the  Prophet)."  These  expressions  of  dislike 
and  hostility  have  determined  the  attitude  of  his  successors. 

Two  years  after  the  Prophet's  death,  i.  e.,  in  634,  Omar 
compelled  Christians  to  sign  the  following  agreement :  "  We 
promise  not  to  build  any  new  monasteries  or  churches,  nor  to 
repair  ruinous  ones  in  our  cities  and  suburbs.  Moslems  may 
at  any  time  enter  our  churches.  We  will  entertain  Moslem 
travellers  for  three  successive  days.  We  will  not  grant  asylum 
either  in  our  churches  or  houses  to  enemies  of  the  state.  We 
will  neither  teach  our  children  the  Koran,  nor  exaggerate  our 
Law  (the  Bible).  We  will  prevent  no  one  from  becoming  a 
Muhammadan.  We  will  not  assume  the  Muhammadan  mode 
of  cutting  the  hair,  nor  wear  our  hair  in  their  fashion ;  nor 
use  their  greeting,  '  salem  alaihum '  j  nor  adopt  their  names. 


6o      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

When  riding,  we  will  use  no  saddle,  nor  will  we  carry  arms. 
We  will  not  engrave  our  seals  with  Arabic  characters,  nor  will 
we  sell  spirituous  liquors.  We  will  shave  our  foreheads  and 
wear  a  belt  about  the  body.  When  we  pass  through  streets  or 
market-places  where  Muhammadans  are  walking,  we  will  ex- 
hibit neither  the  cross  nor  the  Bible.  We  will  ring  our  bells 
softly,  not  speak  in  the  presence  of  Muhammadans,  nor  sing 
at  our  funerals,  nor  lay  our  dead  near  any  Muhammadan 
quarter.  We  will  not  buy  any  slave  belonging  to  a  Muham- 
madan. These  are  the  conditions  which  we  sign,  and  on  the 
strength  of  them  we  and  our  people  may  enjoy  the  protection 
of  the  Khalif." 

This  is  the  spirit  of  the  later  regulations  of  the  Khalifs  and 
verdicts  of  the  Ulamas.  The  Zimmy  (Christian  subjects)  are 
not  allowed  to  ride  horses,  mules,  or  valuable  asses ;  may  not 
frequent  public  streets,  nor  linger  in  groups  to  talk  with  one 
another  ;  nor  have  any  servants  following  them  in  the  bazars ; 
nor  speak  loudly.  Their  houses  may  not  be  high  (at  any  rate 
not  higher  than  those  of  the  Muhammadans),  nor  airy,  nor 
decorated  ;  their  clothes  must  be  of  plain  dark  material ;  and 
their  turbans  may  not  be  white.  They  are  thus  to  be  openly 
humiliated.  If  the}'^  attempt  in  any  way  to  excel  Muhamma- 
dans, or  to  gain  power  over  them,  they  shall  be  punished  with 
death.  No  Muhammadan  may  sell  land  to  a  Zimmy ;  but  the 
latter  is  under  an  obligation  to  sell  his  field  to  any  Muham- 
madan who  may  wish  to  have  it.  The  Faithful  are  not  al- 
lowed to  greet  a  Zimmy.  A  Zimmy  may  never  take  a  seat  of 
honour  in  any  assembly.  Under  no  circumstances  is  his  witness 
against  a  Moslem  in  a  court  of  justice  to  be  decisive.  And  the 
Zimmy  have  to  pay  a  poll  tax.  Khalif  Omar  fixed  this  at  forty- 
eight  dirham  for  the  rich,  twenty-four  for  the  middle  classes, 
and  twelve  for  the  poor;  but  subsequent  rulers  altered  the 
tax  at  pleasure,  always  a  profitable  method  of  extortion.  Per- 
haps the  most  dreadful  tax  was  the  blood  tax.  Turkish  Sultans 
in  1329  and  1360  formed  Janissary  regiments  entirely  of  young 
Christian  captives  who  had  been  forced  to  become  Muhamma- 
dans.    These  renegades,  who  were  favoured  and  pampered  iu 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    6i 

many  ways,  were  destined  to  be  the  scourge  of  their  parents 
if  the  latter  refused  to  be  converted  to  Islam.  Sultan  Murad 
specially  ordained  that  this  troop  was  to  be  recruited  solely 
from  Christian  captives  and  from  the  young  men  of  recently 
subjected  Christian  territories.  It  was  terrible  when  the 
Turkish  recruiting  officers  passed  through  the  villages,  enlisting 
the  flower  of  Christian  youth  and  placing  them  in  these  Jan- 
issary regiments  for  the  express  purpose  of  systematically 
training  them  to  be  deadly  enemies  of  Christianity.  Demor- 
alization was  also  bound  to  be  the  effect  of  regulations  such  as 
the  infamous  jadid  ul  Islam  in  Persia,  stating  the  privileges 
of  the  newly  converted :  A  Moslem,  whether  he  be  a  Moslem 
by  birth  or  by  conversion,  is  forbidden  on  pain  of  death  to 
embrace  Christianity.  But  if  a  Christian  woman  embraces 
Islam,  which  sometimes  happened  in  consequence  of  temporary 
family  quarrels,  and  which  could  be  effected  by  the  use  of  a 
very  simple  formula,  this  law  gives  her  the  possessions  of  her 
father,  mother  and  relations  to  the  seventh  degree.^  Nor  were 
these  measures  of  oppression  and  humiliation  sufficient  to 
satisfy  the  Moslems  or  to  crush  the  hated  Christians.  The 
last  resort  was^  barbarous  cruelty.  "Well-nigh  every  century 
can  tell  of  persecutions  in  this  or  that  Muhammadan  country, 
once  a  Christian  land.  The  most  fearful  of  them  are  crowded 
into  the  nineteenth  century.  In  letters  of  blood  are  inscribed 
on  the  pages  of  the  history  of  the  Oriental  Churches  the  massa- 
cres of  1822  in  the  island  of  Chios ;  1845,  in  Kurdistan  ;  1860, 
in  the  Lebanon  ;  1875,  in  Herzegovina  ;  1876,  in  Bulgaria ; 
1894-1896,  in  Armenia.  Any  Christian  population,  when  it 
threatens  to  cause  annoyance  or  to  become  dangerous  by  rea- 
son of  its  increasing  influence,  is  to  be  kept  low  by  the  simple 
expedient  of  copious  blood-letting. 

In  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century,  under  the  twofold 
influence  of  the  growing  prosperity  of  the  Christian  Churches 
and  of  the  irresistible  advance  of  the  Christian  Occident  with 

*  Fortunately,  humane  officials  and  judges  are  said,  aa  a  rule,  not  to  enforce 
thia  law.  But  what  a  fearful  weapon  it  must  be,  when  in  the  hands  of  fanatical 
Moslems ! 


62      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

its  civilization,  some  of  these  oppressive  regulations  were  mit- 
igated. The  poll  tax  has  been  supplanted  by  a  tax  for  ex- 
emption from  service  in  the  army.  The  regulations  touching 
dress  have  fallen  into  oblivion,  though  the  native  Christians 
are  still  distinguishable  by  their  peculiar  clothing.  Here  and 
there  new  churches  have  been  erected  and  even  provided  with 
bells,  although  in  every  such  case  interminable  negotiations 
and  strong  pressure  on  the  Turkish  authorities  were  necessary. 
The  fundamental  feeling  of  Muhammadans  towards  Christians 
remains'the  same.  Thus  (1)  conversion  to  Christianity  is  a  crime 
punishable  with  death.  If  the  authorities  themselves,  fearing 
the  intervention  of  European  Powers,  do  not  put  the  renegade 
to  death,  every  orthodox  Moslem  considers  it  an  honourable 
duty  to  remove  him  by  assassination,  and  in  so  doing  will  have 
the  approval  of  popular  opinion.  Even  the  magistrates  and 
judges  devise  means  whereby,  in  spite  of  treaties,  renegades 
are  secretly  put  out  of  the  way.  (2)  The  witness  of  a  Chris- 
tian against  a  Moslem  is  of  no  weight.  "  One  of  the  Faithful 
may  not  be  put  to  death  on  account  of  an  unbeliever."  Prac- 
tically, Christians  have  no  legal  standing  in  an  Islamitic  court 
in  lawsuits  with  Muhammadans.  (3)  Generally  speaking^ 
Christians  are  tolerated  in  Muhammadan  countries  only  on 
condition  of  their  submitting  to  humiliating  agreements.  If 
they  free  themselves  from  these  fetters  either  by  their  own 
exertions  or  even  by  the  help  of  the  European  Powers,  they 
are  held  to  have  broken  the  agreement,  and  are  themselves  to 
blame  if  their  Muhammadan  masters  treat  them  as  outlaws. 
Attempts  at  reform  are  therefore  regarded  by  the  Muham- 
madans as  revolutionary,  and  to  repress  them  with  brutal 
force  is  considered  to  be  a  meritorious  act. 

The  long  oppression  of  the  Christian  population  has  had  a 
depressing  effect,  paralyzing  mental  activity  and  economic 
development.  No  people  can  be  enslaved  for  centuries  with- 
out deteriorating  intellectually  and  morally.  Shut  out  from 
political  life,  and  not  allowed  to  enter  the  army  except  in  the 
shameful  form  of  renegade  Janissaries,  Christians  had  only 
the  Church  and  trade  as  fields  of  activity.    But  whenever 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    63 

they  succeeded  in  business,  they  aroused  the  envy  and  cupidity 
of  their  Muhammadan  neighbours  and  were  mercilessly  robbed, 
either  with  or  without  the  appearance  of  justice.  The  only 
wonder  is  that  commercial  enterprise  did  not  die  out  among 
the  Greeks  and  Armenians,  even  as  it  did  among  the  Kopts 
and  Nestorians,  under  the  influence  of  the  constant  fear  of  be- 
ing shamefully  robbed  of  their  hard-won  gains.  It  is  not 
strange  that  honest  trade  dwindled  under  such  oppression  and 
degenerated  into  an  endeavour  to  outwit  and  cheat  one's 
neighbours,  and  to  secrete  the  accumulated  profits. 

Church  life  was  at  a  low  ebb  even  at  the  time  of  the  Mu- 
hammadan invasion.  The  Monophysitic  Churches  of  Armenia, 
Syria  and  Egypt  were  separated  as  by  high  barriers  from 
the  Greeli  Church,  while  the  Nestorian  Church  in  Persia 
was  separated  from  all  the  rest.  Doctrinal  controversies 
had  exhausted  the  best  strength  of  the  Greek  Church, 
and  the  fact  that,  in  a  great  measure,  the  influence  of  the  im- 
perial court  decided  their  issue,  had  a  very  embittering  effect 
upon  these  disputes.  l!Tot  that  there  did  not  appear  an  oc- 
casional exhibition  of  spiritual  vigour  in  one  or  another  of 
these  distracted  Churches.  But  in  the  course  of  centuries  the 
fearful  pressure  of  humiliating  subjection  settled  as  a  fatal 
blight  on  their  life.  True  the  Churches,  with  praiseworthy 
persistence,  held  fast  to  their  ancient  languages.  But  when 
Arabic  gained  a  footing  in  the  south  and  Turkish  in  the  north, 
these  languages  either  died  out  or  gradually  underwent  such 
a  development  that  the  original  forms  were  more  or  less  unin- 
telligible among  the  common  people.  To  the  former  class 
belong  the  Koptic  language  in  Egypt ;  West  Syrian  among  the 
Maronites  and  Jacobites,  and  Greek  among  the  Orthodox 
Greeks  in  Syria ;  to  the  latter  the  Geez  language  in  Abys- 
sinia; East  Syrian  among  the  ISTestorians ;  Old-Armenian 
among  the  Armenians ;  and,  to  a  great  extent,  classic  Greek 
among  the  modern  Greeks.  And  even  this  praiseworthy  per- 
sistency hampered  church  life,  for  the  congregations  did  not 
understand  the  service  any  more,  and  even  the  priests  under- 
stood it  less  and  less.    Public  worship  degenerated  into  the 


64      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

reciting  of  interminable  and  unintelligible  prayers,  with  hardly 
any  intelligent  participation  on  the  part  of  either  clergy  or 
people.  Even  among  the  higher  clergy,  in  the  ranks  of  the 
bishops  and  patriarchs,  the  love  of  study  disappeared.  In 
1821  there  were  among  the  180  highest  clergy  of  the  Orthodox 
Greek  Church  barely  ten  with  any  sort  of  a  theological  educa- 
tion. Nor  was  there  at  that  time  a  single  theological  college 
in  that  Church.  Only  in  1844  was  one  founded  in  the  island 
of  Chalki  near  Constantinople,  and  in  1853  a  second  in  the 
Monastery  of  the  Cross  near  Jerusalem.  To  the  present 
day  there  is  none  in  the  Patriarchates  of  Alexandria  and  Anti- 
och.  Even  these  few  colleges  are,  as  a  rule,  accessible  only  to 
the  [[celibate  higher  clergy  or  to  those  who  hope  to  become 
such.  The  lower  grades  of  clergy  in  town  and  country  are 
married,  though  for  the  most  part  they  may  not  marry  after 
they  have  entered  the  priesthood.  This  partial  abolition  of 
the  requirement  of  celibacy  has  had  a  beneficial  effect  upon 
the  morality  of  the  congregations.  In  another  respect  the 
priests  are  not  so  fortunate.  There  are  scarcely  any  benefices, 
nor  is  there  any  fixed  salary.  The  incomes  of  the  lower  clergy 
are  therefore  very  poor.  The  result  is  twofold,  (a)  Only 
men  of  the  lower  strata  of  the  people  can  be  induced  to  enter 
the  ministry,  and  there  is  no  provision  at  all  made  for  their 
methodical  training.  Congregations  generally  choose  a  work- 
man, tradesman,  or  peasant  of  decent  reputation,  who  can 
read  passably.  Him  they  present  to  the  bishop  for  ordination. 
He  becomes  a  reader  or  deacon  and  is  told  to  learn  by  heart 
as  quickly  as  possible  the  liturgies,  which  are  composed  in  a 
language  more  or  less  strange  to  him,  and  to  perfect  himself 
in  conducting  the  important  religious  ceremonies.  It  is  a  de- 
cided step  forward  that  a  course  of  study  lasting  at  least  a 
few  months  has  now  been  arranged  in  some  churches,  or  that 
the  younger  aspirants  are  sent  to  older  priests  to  be  taught. 
They  receive  no  further  preparation  prior  to  ordination. 
These  inferior  priests  are  therefore  mostly  ignorant  men, 
utterly  incapable  of  giving  religious  instruction  to  the  people. 
The  great  majority  are  unable  to  preach  at  all ;  they  can  read 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    65 

only  with  diflSculty,  and  are  content  to  know  by  heart  their 
church  catechism  in  the  vulgar  tongue. 

(b)  The  second  evil  result  of  the  absence  of  a  regular  salary 
is  that  these  priests  are  forced  to  get  money  by  methods  of 
their  own  devising,  and  the  easiest  and  most  effective  method 
is  that  of  extorting  fees  from  their  congregations.  Apart  from 
the  sacraments  all  kinds  of  ceremonies,  as  well  as  superstitious 
customs,  are  suitable  opportunities  for  doing  this. 

No  wonder,  then,  that,  owing  to  the  poverty  of  the  people 
and  the  condition  of  the  inferior  clergy,  the  church  buildings 
are  in  a  dilapidated  condition,  and  that  the  church  furniture 
and  the  priestly  vestments  are  poor  and  dirty.  The  monastic 
system  has  fallen  into  discredit  and  decay  throughout  all  the 
Churches,  except  in  Egypt  and  the  allied  Church  of  Abyssinia, 
and  in  such  monastic  colonies  as  that  on  Mount  Athos.  Monks 
are  considered  to  be  lazy  and  immoral  do-nothings.  The  fact 
that  the  higher  clergy  are  compelled  to  be  celibate  raises  them 
a  little  in  the  popular  estimation. 

If  the  education  of  the  clergy  is  so  extraordinarily  meagre, 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that,  before  the  beginning  of  Prot- 
estant educational  activity  and  the  recent  advance  of  civiliza- 
tion, education  among  the  common  people  was  in  an  even 
worse  state,  indeed  all  but  nil.  To  the  present  day  there  is 
no  educational  system  in  Turkey.  In  each  church  or  other 
religious  community  it  is  the  business  of  the  superiors  to  pro- 
vide education  for  the  children  under  their  charge,  a  fact  that 
must  be  taken  into  consideration,  when  passing  judgment 
upon  missionary  educational  activity.  When  the  Protestants 
first  arrived  on  the  field,  there  was  hardly  any  educational  work 
being  done  by  the  Churches,  and,  as  a  result  of  this  religious  and 
intellectual  neglect,  there  was  a  boundless  ignorance,  and  all 
sorts  of  superstition,  approaching  idolatry,  in  their  veneration 
of  icons.  Yet  their  Church  was  to  these  peoples,  deprived 
as  they  were  of  all  political  ideals,  despised  and  trodden 
under  foot  by  arbitrary  rulers,  and  shut  off  from  the  great 
intellectual  Christian  world,  their  highest  good.  Whatever 
there  was  in  them  of  enthusiasm,  of  self-sacrificing  love,  of 


66      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

higher  aspirations,  has  been  centred  for  centuries  in  their 
Churches.  Outside  there  were  only  material  interests,  or 
hopeless  darkness  and  misery.  National  feeling  found  its 
strength  and  stay  in  the  bond  of  church  unity.  Nation  and 
Church  became  blended  in  one. 

We  have  arrived  thus  at  a  point  at  which  we  must  take 
our  bearings  by  answering  the  question : 

7.  What  is'the  Justification  of  Protestant  Missions  Among 
the  Oriental  Christian  Churches  ? 
There  is  in  some  quarters  a  feeling  that  Protestant  mission- 
ary activity  should  be  confined  to  non-Christians.  "We  Prot- 
estants hold  that  genuine  faith  may  be  exercised,  that  com- 
munion with  God  may  be  enjoyed  and  the  salvation  of  the 
soul  secured,  even  in  the  less  creditable  forms  of  Christianity 
and  church  organization.  We  dislike  the  fanaticism  that 
compasses  land  and  sea  to  make  one  proselyte.  And  we 
reverence  historical  ecclesiastical  organizations,  especially  if 
they  have  stood  the  test  of  fiery  trials.  Thus,  since  the 
massacres  of  1895  and  1896  our  respect  for  the  Armenian 
Church,  which,  in  other  regards,  has  not  enjoyed  the  sympathy 
of  the  Christian  Church  at  large  in  any  great  measure,  has 
increased.  A  national  Church,  thousands  of  whose  members 
willingly  die  for  their  faith,  evidences  thereby  its  vitality  and 
justifies  its  existence.  It  is  true  that  the  Protestant  Church 
has  been  entrusted  with  the  safe-keeping  of  peculiar  treasures 
such  as  the  free  use  of  God's  Word,  clearer  insight  into  God's 
purposes  of  love,  the  abrogation  of  priestly  power,  and  the 
treasures  of  Christian  literature  ;  and  that  the  possession  of  each 
such  gift  carries  with  it  the  duty  of  working  among  all  who 
are  less  favoured.  It  is  true  also  that  the  need  of  the  Oriental 
Churches  is  apparent  at  a  glance,  when  one  compares  them^ 
oppressed,  uneducated,  impoverished,  with  the  flourishing 
Churches  of  the  Protestant  Occident.  The  contrast  was  even 
greater  when  a  century  ago  the  Protestant  Churches  were 
beginning  their  mission  work,  for  at  that  time  the  great  in- 
vasion  of  the  Near  East  by  the  culture  of  the  West  had  scarcely 


^  The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    67 

begun,  and  the  ancient  Churches  lay  under  the  debris  of  eco. 
nomical  and  religious  ruin. 

Yet  would  it  not  be  possible  to  reform  these  Churches 
thoroughly  from  within,  thus  avoiding  on  the  one  hand  the 
deplorable  effects  of  a  schism  in  the  several  Churches,  and 
conserving  on  the  other  hand  that  sense  of  nationality  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  practically  identical  with  church  loyalty  ? 
We  must  consider  at  some  length  the  relation  of  the  Prot- 
estant missionary  activity  to  the  national  ideal  and  to  the 
ideal  of  church  unity. 

Opponents  of  Protestant  missions  in  the  Near  East  have 
advanced  the  argument  that  in  all  the  Oriental  Churches  re. 
ligion  and  national  loyalty  are  indissolubly  united,  that  this 
union  of  the  two  most  precious  assets  of  a  nation,  clung  to 
by  peoples  languishing  for  centuries  under  the  cruel  yoke  of 
the  Turks,  has  been  their  salvation  and  the  secret  of  their 
survival,  and  that  therefore  every  secession  from  the  national 
Church  is  treason  to  the  national  cause.  The  unscrupulous 
propaganda  of  Eome,  hovering  over  them  for  centuries,  now 
enticingly  and  again  threateningly,  has  had  a  share  in  render- 
ing the  members  of  the  ancient  Churches  sensitively  hostile 
to  all  foreign  interference.  Eome's  considerable  success  in 
her  efforts  at  proselytizing  has  notoriously  weakened  thesf!^ 
remnants  of  nations.  The  formation  of  Protestant  Churchej-^ 
it  is  argued,  is  driving  in  another  wedge,  and  so  increasing  the' 
disruption.  It  is  digging  the  grave  of  nations  that  have  sur- 
vived all  the  winter  storms  of  Turkish  tyranny,  only  to  be  led 
to  destruction  by  a  deceptive  Protestant  propaganda,  backed 
by  a  superior  culture  and  a  full  money  bag.  If  national  ex- 
istence is  to  be  saved,  the  national  Churches  must  at  all  costs 
remain  intact. 

In  reply  to  this  argument  it  must  be  said,  in  the  first  place, 
that  this  patriotism  which  is  to  be  conserved  varies  greatly  in 
strength  and  purity.  We  are  helped  to  form  a  sober  estimate 
of  it  by  the  fact  that  the  Syrian  Nestorians  deserted  their 
venerable  ancient  Church  in  1898  to  enter  the  Orthodox 
Church,  solely  for  the  purpose  of  securing  the  protection  of 


68      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Kussia.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  any  one  acquainted  with  the 
country  and  people  will  form  a  particularly  high  opinion  of 
the  national  sentiments  of  Christians  in  Palestine  and  Syria. 
These  Syrians,  by  reason  of  their  being  so  ardently  wooed  by 
politicians,  have  generally  formed  an  inordinately  high  esti- 
mate of  their  own  value,  and  are  bent  on  offering  themselves 
to  the  highest  bidder. 

In  the  second  place  it  must  be  maintained  that  the  identifi- 
cation of  the  nation  with  the'  Church  is  a  danger  to  the  church 
life.  National  questions  are  the  bane  of  Turkey,  making  of 
her  internal  policy  an  inextricable  tangle.  We  refrain  from 
offering  an  opinion  on  the  political  aspect  of  these  questions  ; 
but  it  is  notorious  that  the  more  the  different  tribes  inhabiting 
the  Balkans  and  Asiatic  Turkey  have  fought  for  their  national 
unity  and  their  political  future,  the  more  sadly  have  questions 
that  do  not  have  to  do  with  political  existence  or  supremacy 
fallen  into  neglect.  Eeligious  interests  secede  into  the  back- 
ground, are  swallowed  up  in  these  political  aspirations,  or  are 
even  employed- to  further  them.  One  has  only  to  think  of  the 
Bulgarians,  the  Servians,  the  Greeks  outside  of  Greece,  the 
Armenians  and  others.     A  diseased  nationalism  renders  the 

,  work  of  Protestant  missionaries  uncommonlv  difficult,  although 
no  •  ./  '  o 

-,ney  can  with  a  good  conscience  be  acquitted  of  mixing  them- 
silves  up  with  political  intrigues,  in  this  respect  comparing 
very  favourably  with  their  Eoman  competitors.  They  suffer 
sorely  from  the  suspicion  and  the  constant  accusation  of  being 
the  agents  of  the  political  intentions  of  one  or  other  of  the 
great  powers.  Viewing  this  contest  from  a  distance  we  be- 
lieve it  is  a  great  boon  to  the  national  Churches,  that,  in  the 
midst  of  this  political  hubbub,  this  ebullition  of  contending 
national  aims,  they  have,  standing  side  by  side  with  them, 
Protestant  missions  which  have  as  their  sole  aim  the  moral 
and  religious  elevation  of  the  people,  and  seek  only  to  establish 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  It  would  be  a  thousand  pities,  were 
these  noble  nations  to  be  wrecked  on  the  rock  of  national 
intrigue  after  all  the  conflicts  of  a  glorious  past.  The  Prot- 
estant missions,  by  very  reason  of  their  entirely  non-political 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    69 

character,  arc  the  faithful  friends  of  these  Churches,  pointing 
them  ever  to  the  religious  sources  whence  they  may  derive 
true  strength. 

In  the  third  place  we  affirm  that  conversion  to  Protestant- 
ism does  not  destroy  genuine  national  feeling.  Christian  mis- 
sions, whether  among  civilized  or  uncivilized  nations,  whether 
among  Armenians  or  the  Papuas,  have  to  face  the  objection 
that  they  are  ruining  the  national  spirit,  since  every  one  who 
joins  them  ceases  to  be  one  of  his  own  people.  Yet  the  most 
persistent  repetition  of  it  does  not  make  the  objection  true, 
for  it  rests  on  a  delusion.  It  is  true  that  in  Europe  also  the 
principle  "  cuius  regio  ejus  religio  "  has  been  the  creed  of 
statesmen  for  a  long  time,  but  we  have  learned  at  last  that 
(church  and  nation  are  not  necessarily  identical  quantities. 
We  suffer  much  from  the  rupture  between  Wittenberg  and 
Eome,  yet  no  honest  Protestant  in  Germany  would  for  a  mo- 
ment grant  that  the  Reformation  was  a  national  misfortune. 
He  will  only  deplore  the  fact  that  it  has  not  penetrated  the 
whole  nation.  Just  the  same  is  it  with  the  founding  of  Prot- 
estant Churches  in  the  Orient ;  and  matters  have  improved 
even  in  Turkey  to  such  a  degree  that  the  members  of  Protes- 
tant Churches  can,  in  spite  of  their  creed,  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  their  compatriots.  The  sufferings  common  to 
Armenians  and  Protestant  converts  during  the  persecutions  of 
1895  have  brought  them  so  close  together  that  their  pastors 
exchange  pulpits  with  one  another,  that  their  congregations 
have  in  some  cases  founded  schools  in  common,  and  that  in 
Icertain  circles  the  Protestants  are  asking  themselves  whether 
they  may  not  now  return  to  the  old  Church  in  order  to  act  as 
a  leaven  in  it. 

So  much  for  the  argument  that  the  founding  of  Protestant 
Churches  destroys  the  national  spirit.  Of  greater  weight  is 
the  objection  that  a  schism  in  the  Oriental  Churches  is  full  of 
evil  results  for  the  religious  life.  Experience  teaches  that  in 
many  cases  of  proselytism  much  blind  fanaticism  and  narrow- 
minded  hostility  are  let  loose  and  that  the  proselytes  are  not 
religiously  improved,  developing    rather  a  ruinous  spiritual 


yo      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

pride.  Opponents  of  Protestant  missions  in  the  Orient  urge 
that  this  very  condition  of  affairs  exists  there.  According  to 
them,  though  the  ancient  Churches  are  admitted  to  be 
deficient  in  some  points,  yet  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  a 
thorough  reformation  from  within.  A  better  knowledge  of 
church  history  would,  they  say,  enable  us  to  estimate  at  their 
proper  value  the  spiritual  treasures  and  the  peculiar  beauty 
which  the  ancient  Churches  possess,  in  spite  of  evident  traces 
of  decay.  And  it  is  at  any  rate  a  fundamental  mistake  to 
graft  on  the  venerable  stem  of  these  ancient  Churches  with 
their  episcopal  government,  their  grand  liturgies,  and  their 
solemn  services,  any  modern  American  form  of  democratic 
Congregationalism  or  Presbyterianism  with  their  lack  of  his- 
toric episcopate  and  liturgy. 

These  are  indeed  weighty  arguments,  containing  a  certain 
amount  of  just  criticism,  and  helping  us  to  understand  certain 
painful  facts  to  be  presented  by  us  in  subsequent  pages.  Yet 
by  shooting  far  beyond  the  mark  this  criticism  becomes  guilty 
of  injustice.  Let  us  examine  it  without  prejudice.  The  great 
Protestant  missions  have  been  sent  to  the  Near  East  with  the 
earnest  desire,  not  to  found  new  Churches,  but,  by  self-denying 
service  and  by  the  introduction  of  Protestant  vitality,  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  reform  from  within.  The  development  of  the 
missions  has  been  the  same  in  nearly  every  case.  Sooner  or 
later  the  authorities  of  the  native  Churches  have  pushed  away 
the  hand  offered  to  them  and  have  set  about  exorcising  the 
missions  and  their  adherents.  This  inevitably  led  to  a  crisis. 
The  missions  had  to  decide  whether  they  should  desist  from 
the  task  in  the  face  of  such  opposition — some  have  done  so — 
or,  as  the  majority  of  them  have  done,  risk  the  formation  of 
separate  Protestant  Churches,  and  continue  their  work  in  the 
face  of  the  inevitable  conflicts. 

Were  they  right  in  coming  to  this  decision  ?  There  is  no 
article  of  Protestant  faith  which  excludes  an  episcopacy.  Ac- 
cordingly episcopal  preeminence  and  the  long  liturgies  with 
their  acknowledged  beauty  might  have  been  tolerated  by  the 
democratic     Congregationalists.      Deep-rooted     superstition 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    71 

might  eventually  have  been  conquered  after  a  long  and  dreary- 
battle.  The  want  of  education  among  the  inferior  clergy 
might  have  been  met  by  the  founding  of  grammar  schools  and 
colleges.  Even  celibacy  among  the  higher  clergy  would  not 
have  been  impossible  to  Protestantism.  Therefore,  given 
mutual  good-will,  agreement  would  not  have  been  out  of  the 
question.  But  there  would  still  have  remained  difficulties  al- 
most insuperable.  Ecclesiastical  tradition,  in  which  the  relig- 
ious life  is  everywhere  rooted,  dies  hard.  It  has  the  glamour 
of  centuries  upon  it.  Now  the  venerable  ecclesiastical  usages 
of  most  of  the  Eastern  Churches  include  the  retention  of  a  for- 
gotten language  in  the  services,  the  veneration  of  images  and 
relics,  and  praying  to  the  saints,  above  all  very  long  and  strict 
fasting,  and  an  excessive  number  of  feasts.  It  would  have  de- 
manded great  self-renunciation  on  the  part  of  the  leaders  of 
those  Churches  to  join  with  the  missionary  societies  in  com- 
bating these  obstructive  traditions.  And  had  the  Protestants 
for  their  part  armed  themselves  with  the  meekness  of  Jesus  in 
addition  to  possessing  the  most  highl}^  developed  historical 
sense,  even  this  could  not  have  done  away  with  the  fact  that 
the  doctrinal  systems  of  these  Churches — some  Monophysitic, 
others  Nestorian — were  too  stunted  and  insufficient  to  be  re- 
tained. And  had  the  church  leaders  persisted  in  adhering  to 
them,  even  though  there  had  been  in  other  respects  the  best 
will  to  come  to  an  agreement,  negotiations  must  have  failed. 
It  is  all  in  vain,  when  Lutherans  attempt  to  revivify  the 
Nestorian  Church  on  the  basis  of  the  Augsburg  Confession,  or 
when  high-church  Anglicans  set  themselves  with  untiring 
diligence  to  disinter  the  venerable  Nestorian  liturgies,  as  if 
there  were  no  dogmatic  differences.  The  deep  chasm  is  still 
unbridged  and  can  be  ignored  only  as  long  as  there  is  the  pro- 
foundest  good-will  on  both  sides.  As  soon  as  it  became  clear 
that  this  good-will  could  not  be  expected  from  the  leaders  of 
the  Oriental  Churches,  the  question  which  faced  the  mission- 
aries was  not  merely  how  they  could  most  patiently  bear  the 
chicanery  of  the  church  authorities,  but  how  they  could  go 
forward  in  face  of  the  opposition  of  these  authorities.    At  first 


72      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  missionary  motto  was  "  Reform — with  the  aid  of  the 
authorities  if  possible  "  ;  now  it  is  "  Reform — without  the  help 
of,  and,  if  need  be,  in  opposition  to  the  authorities." 

The  immense  difficulty  of  pursuing  such  a  course  in  Churches 
which  have  been  for  centuries  under  the  control  of  the  priests 
could  be  surmounted  only  by  the  formation  of  separate 
Churches.  But  the  ideal  of  reform  remains  constant.  The 
more  so  as  Protestant  missions  in  the  Near  East  were  begun 
with  the  definite  idea  of  reaching  the  Muhammadans  by 
means  of  the  existing  Oriental  Churches.  If  it  were  possible 
;  to  restore  the  Oriental  Churches  to  their  original  purity  and 
vitality,  and  to  fill  them  with  a  lively  missionary  spirit,  they 
would  be  the  grandest  practical  demonstration  of  Christianity 
to  the  surrounding  Muhammadan  masses  ;  the  best  and  most 
effectual  missionaries  because  native  to  the  soil.  Above  all, 
in  this  way  one  of  the  greatest  hindrances  to  the  spread  of 
Christianity  in  Muhammadan  countries  would  be  removed, 
namely,  the  horror  the  Muhammadans  have  of  the  supposed 
idolatry  and  polytheism  of  the  Christians.  We  must,  alas, 
recognize  the  fact,  that  this  fond  hope  of  the  pioneers  of 
Protestant  missions  has  not  been  realized.  Not  one  of  the 
larger  ancient  Churches  has  roused  itself  to  undertake  such 
radical  reforms  as  would  remove  the  stumbling-blocks  for 
Muhammadans.  It  has  also  become  evident  that  the  friction' 
'which  has  obtained  for  centuries  between  Christians  and 
Moslems  living  in  close  contact  with  each  other  has  produced 
such  deep-rooted  animosity  and  mutual  contempt,  as  well  as 
such  a  strong  feeling  of  racial  incompatibility,  that  the  native 
Christians  are  little  adapted  for  service  in  missions  among 
Muhammadans.  It  has  also  proved  to  be  the  case  that  at 
the  present  time  the  Oriental  Churches  are  still  too  much 
under  the  yoke  to  defy  their  Muhammadan  rulers  by  permit- 
ting Muhammadans  to  join  them.  Christians  are  tolerated 
only  on  the  condition  that  they  abstain  from  making 
proselytes  of  Muhammadans.  Should  they  receive  Muham- 
madans who  become  Christians  into  their  churches  or  even 
harbour  them  in  their  homes,  they  would  forfeit  whatever 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    73 

amount  of  freedom  they  now  enjoy,  exposing  themselves 
afresh  to  persecution. 

Yet  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  pioneers  was  a  sound 
one.  The  great  task  of  the  Christian  Church  is  the  spiritual 
reconquest  of  these  lost  provinces  of  the  Church,  until  at  last  the 
cradle-lands  of  Christianity  be  again  under  the  shadow  of  the 
Cross.  In  this  campaign  of  reconquest,  the  ancient  Christian 
peoples  and  remnants  of  peoples  naturally  play  a  prominent 
part.  Wherever  they  are  in  a  compact  mass  with  a  firm 
political  and  ecclesiastical  organization,  as  in  Roumania, 
Servia,  Bulgaria  and  Greece,  the  political  development  of  the 
last  century  has  freed  them  from  the  Turkish  yoke,  and  in 
every  one  of  these  liberated  countries,  the  return  to  Chris- 
tianity has  been  astonishing,  Islam  having  been  completely 
thrust  into  the  background.  Where  the  Christians  are  a 
minority,  political  and  ecclesiastical  progress  is  more  difficult 
and  slower.  In  such  cases  the  Christians  must  be  first  raised 
from  the  degradation  caused  by  the  contempt  and  neglect  of  their 
oppressors.  They  must  be  elevated  by  the  education  of  mind 
and  spirit  till  they  are  in  a  position  to  compete  economically 
with  their  more  favoured  neighbours.  It  seems  impossible 
to  imagine  a  re-Christianization  of  the  East,  save  through  the 
vitalizing  of  the  ancient  Churches.  No  lesser  aim  should 
satisfy  us.  Have  Protestant  missions  contributed  much  to  a 
general  intellectual  and  spiritual  restoration  of  these  ancient 
Christian  peoples  ?  Our  further  enquiry  will  prove  that  we 
may  confidently  and  joyfully  answer,  yes.  Here  we  will 
simply  mention  a  few  points  that  are  important  for  the  correct 
understanding  of  subsequent  chapters  of  this  book,  always 
remembering  that  we  have  to  apply  to  these  missions  a 
standard  different  from  that  applied  to  missions  among 
non-Christians,  since  in  this  case  the  formation  of  separate 
churches  is  not  the  main  object  of  the  mission  work,  but 
only  an  inevitable  consequence  which  has  hardly  ever 
caused  the  missionaries  to  loose  sight  of  their  chief  purpose  of 
reform. 

Protestant  missions  and  Bible  societies  deserve  great  praise 


74      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

for  translating,  printing  and  distributing  the  Holy  Scriptures 
in  all  the  languages  and  dialects  of  the  Oriental  Churches, 
and  for  selling  them  so  cheaply  that  they  may  be  in  the  hands 
of  all.  In  most  of  the  languages  of  the  Christian  populations 
— Arabic,  Armenian,  Bulgarian — Protestants  have  laid  the 
foundation  of  a  healthy,  popular  Christian  literature,  while 
in  other  cases  they  have  been  the  first  to  introduce  a  written 
language. 

Day  schools  have  everywhere  received  careful  attention, 
and  higher  schools  have  been  founded.  The  Eobert  College 
near  Constantinople,  the  colleges  in  Marsovan,  Kharput, 
Aintab,  Marash,  Tarsus  and  Assiut  are  leading  higher  edu- 
cation in  the  Near  East.  The  Syrian  Protestant  College  in 
Beirut  is  the  best  and  most  advanced  Christian  school  in  the 
whole  of  Turkey. 

The  only  competitors  of  these  schools  are  not  the  native 
Christian  schools,  but  those  of  the  Roman  Missions.  Nor 
may  we  underestimate  the  value  of  the  founding  of  separate 
Christian  Churches,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  to  be  regretted  in 
connection  with  them.  The  course  of  their  history  has  in 
general  run  thus  :  after  the  rupture  was  complete,  the  ancient 
Church  shut  itself  up  against  Protestant  aims  in  a  spirit  of 
suspicion  and  hostility,  placing  every  possible  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  influencing  its  people.  Those  were  critical  times  of 
patient  endurance,  when  the  missionaries  felt  as  if  they  had 
been  put  into  the  corner.  Their  only  hope  lay  in  the  small 
Protestant  congregations,  which  they  cherished  with  all  the 
greater  solicitude  since  these  were  to  be  an  object-lesson  to 
the  resisting  Churches.  When,  at  times,  the  question  was 
raised  in  these  Protestant  Churches,  whether,  out  of  national 
loyalty  they  ought  not  to  return  to  their  native  Church,  the 
answer  was  generally  in  the  negative.  And  the  reason  given 
was  characteristic.  They  said :  While  we  maintain  a  separate 
position  as  Protestants,  our  very  existence  and  all  our  institu- 
tions are  an  incentive  to  the  old  Churches  to  reform  them- 
selves, and  to  clear  away  the  rubbish  of  their  antiquated 
usages;  but  if  we  return  to  the  old  Church,  we  shall  our- 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches 


75 


I  selves  come  under  the  influence  of  the  old  spirit  of  stagnation, 
'  our  salt  will  lose  its  savour.  And  it  is  in  truth  our  judgment, 
after  having  looked  at  the  matter  from  all  sides,  that  the 
flourishing  little  Protestant  congregations  under  the  care  of 
the  missionaries  are  the  most  effectual  spur  to  the  ancient 
Churches. 

The  general  picture,  presented  to  the  careful  observer  of 
the  present  day,  differs  from  that  which  confronted  the  first 
pioneers.  At  that  time  there  were  but  oppressed  remnants  of 
nations  struggling  for  bare  existence ;  to-day  we  see  power- 
fully aspiring,  strenuous,  intelligent  peoples,  which  Turkey 
cannot  disregard  and  which  play  an  important  part  in  Oriental 
politics.  This  change  is  not  to  be  ascribed  solely  to  the  work 
of  the  Protestant  missions,  yet  these  have  had  a  considerable 
share  in  bringing  it  about. 

The  Anglican  Bishop  Th.  Y.  French,  is  a  valuable  wit- 
ness to  this  penetrating  influence,  especially  of  the  American 
missions.  He  had  strong  high  church  leanings  and  entered 
upon  his  extensive  journeyings  in  the  East  with  a  prejudice 
against  the  "  proselytism  "  of  the  Americans.  Yet,  in  writing 
an  official  report  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  he  says 
that  he  had  everywhere  met  with  proof  of  the  stimulating, 
vivifying  effect  of  the  schools,  public  worship  and  other  efforts 
of  the  Americans  in  various  Oriental  Churches  ("Life  of 
Bishop  French,"  Yol.  II,  p.  262). 

A  late  annual  report  of  the  United  Presbyterian  Mission 
in  Egypt  presents  impartially  the  light  and  shade  of  the  rela- 
tion between  the  old  and  the  Protestant  Churches  in  that 
land : 

"  In  some  localities,  evangelical  truth  has  gained  such  an  in- 
fluence, that  many  who  have  not  united  with  us,  like  never- 
theless to  bo  called  '  Protestants.'  But  in  many  regions,  that 
name  is  still  most  cordially  hated.  Everywhere,  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities  are,  either  openly  or  secretly,  hostile.  They 
represent  us  as  a  foreign  and  schismatic  sect.  The  Koptic 
community  is  urged  to  cling  together  to  preserve  its  national 
and  ecclesiastical  life.    This  appeal  doubtless  deters  many  who 


76      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

would  otherwise  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  Evangelical  Church. 
Inducements  of  office  and  honour  are  used  also  to  hold  men  of 
influence,  and  sometimes  even  to  draw  such  back  when  the}'' 
have  left  the  Church.  We  seem  compelled  to  believe  that  the 
adoption  by  the  Koptic  Church  of  some  of  our  methods,  such 
as  the  introduction  of  preaching  into  church  services  at  some 
places,  has  as  its  chief  aim  the  holding  rather  than  the  edifying 
of  the  people.  In  any  case,  the  presence  of  these  new  features 
gives  a  semblance  of  life,  causing  the  people  to  feel  less  need 
of  looking  towards  the  Evangelical  Church,  and  making  them 
less  approachable.  Here  and  there  are  found  enlightened, 
earnest  Christians  who  retain  their  connection  with  the  old 
Church.  But  they  have  nearly  always  gotten  their  light  from 
outside,  and  still  go  outside  for  their  spiritual  food.  One  of 
these  acknowledged  to  the  writer  that  within  his  Church  as  a 
whole  'spirituality  does  not  exist.'  One  cannot  but  feel  some 
sympathy  with  the  desire  of  this  ancient  Church  to  hold  to- 
gether ;  but  in  the  absence  of  spiritual  life,  it  amounts  to 
weighing  of  tradition  and  sentiment  against  eternal  truth  and 
eternal  life.  If  the  day  shall  ever  come  that  God  shall  breathe 
upon  these  dry  bones  and  cause  them  to  live  and  rise  up  to 
serve  Him  by  some  better  process  than  the  naturally  slow  and 
painful  one  of  wrenching  the  members  one  by  one  out  of  their 
own  and  into  another  organization,  it  will  be  welcomed  by  our 
mission.  But  that  day  is  not  yet  here.  The  Evangelical 
Church  stands  as  the  only  rallying  point  for  true  faith  and  life 
and  service  "  (Unit.  Presby.  Ann.  Eep.  1907,  52). 

8.     Has  the  Time  Come  for  Muhammadan  Missions  in 

the  Wear  East  ? 
This,  too,  is  a  much  discussed  question,  that  is  answered  as 
often  in  the  negative  as  in  the  affirmative.  The  historical 
development  may  be  briefly  stated,  as  follows :  Missions 
were  sent  to  do  work  among  Muhammadans  by  first  bringing 
new  life  into  the  old  Churches.  It  was  found  that  this  pre- 
paratory work  was  more  difficult  than  had  been  expected,  and  on 
it  all  effort  was  at  first  concentrated.    Then  it  dawned  upon  the 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    77 

missionaries  that  their  work  among  the  old  Churches  was  lead- 
ing not  to,  but  away  from  mission  work  among  Muhararaadans. 
The  chasm  separating  the  Muhammadan  and  Christian  popula- 
tions is  so  deep  that  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  reach  both  by 
starting  from  the  same  point  and  employing  the  same  agents. 
Accordingly  some  of  the  missions  have  begun  a  Muhammadan 
mission  side  by  side  with  their  work  among  the  old  Churches, 
others  have  confined  themselves  to  the  latter  work,  while 
certain  societies  have  begun  to  work  exclusively  among 
Muhammadans.  The  motto  "  One  as  a  means  to  the  other  " 
has  been  changed  to  "  One  or  the  other,  or  the  two  side  by 
side." 

'Now  there  is  no  difference  of  opinion  among  Protestant 
missionaries  that  the  Muhammadans  need  the  Gospel  of 
salvation  in  Christ,  seeing  there  is  no  "  salvation  in  any  other ; 
for  there  is  none  other  name  under  heaven,  given  among 
men,  whereby  we  must  be  saved."  That  the  convert  stands 
in  danger  of  his  life  is  no  reason  for  delaying  Muhammadan 
missions,  for  in  every  new  field,  particular  dangers  must  be 
faced  at  the  beginning.  The  Lord  has  told  us  that  before- 
hand. Again,  160  out  of  the  225  millions  of  Muhammadans 
are  under  Christian  rule.  It  is  evidently  the  duty  of  Chris- 
tian colonial  governments  to  secure  religious  liberty,  in  so  far 
at  least  that  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  their  terri- 
tories every  one  shall  have  a  legal  right  to  embrace  Christianity 
and  shall  be  protected  in  the  exercise  of  this  right.  And  this 
is  the  case  in  most  of  the  colonies  of  the  Christian  Powers. 

But  it  is  contended  that  it  is  not  right  to  carry  on  Protestant 
missionary  work  among  the  thirty-eight  millions  of  Muham- 
madans under  Turkish,  Persian  or  Moroccan  rule.  Yet  it  is 
with  these  latter  we  have  to  do  in  this  volume. 

No  doubt  great  difficulties  confront  mission  work  in  the 
Near  East.  Public  preaching  of  the  Gospel  is  forbidden  in 
the  streets  and  bazars.  The  opening  of  mission  schools  for 
Muhammadan  children  is  difficult,  such  schools  being  often 
forcibly  closed  by  command  of  the  mollah  or  the  government. 
Muhammadans,  too,  are  forbidden  to  send  their  children  to 


78      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

such  schools.  The  distribution  of  the  Scriptures  is  rendered 
difficult,  and  the  publishing  of  polemic  literature  directed 
against  Islam  is  unlawful.  There  is  a  tiresome  struggle  with 
the  authorities  over  the  building  of  any  church  or  chapel,  and 
if  it  be  found  that  such  buildings  are  intended  for  work  among 
Muhammadans,  permission  to  build  is  withheld.  When  in- 
dividual Moslems  seek  to  enter  into  closer  relations  with  the 
missionaries,  they  fall  at  once  under  suspicion  and  threat.  To 
be  converted  to  Christianity  means  sentence  of  death,  and 
even  if  the  authorities  do  not  venture  to  carry  out  this  law  of 
the  Koran  openly,  there  are  a  hundred  ways  of  putting  the 
convert  out  of  the  way,  whether  by  poison  or  enlistment  or 
otherwise.  And  the  nearer  relatives  of  the  apostate  would 
probably  say,  "  Better  dead  than  be  a  Christian." 

These  great  obstacles  have  lent  weight  to  the  opinion  that 
the  time  has  not  yet  arrived  for  Muhammadan  missions  in  the 
N'ear  East.  Now  for  some  missionary  societies  it  is  certainly 
hard  to  say  whether  after  satisfying  the  urgent  demands  of 
mission  work  already  in  full  operation  in  Africa,  India,  and 
the  Far  East,  they  can  find  the  men  and  the  means  to  carry 
on  a  strenuous  mission  among  the  Muhammadans  in  the  Near 
East.  That  is  a  question  for  Christian  charit}'-  to  decide. 
Here  we  would  only  ask,  Is  there,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  any 
prospect  that  the  opportunity  for  mission  work  among 
Muhammadans  will  become  more  favourable  than  at  present  ? 

Egypt  has  been  since  1882  under  the  control,  one  may  al- 
most say  the  rule,  of  Christian  England.  But  if  even  so  emi- 
nent a  statesman  as  Lord  Cromer  has  held  it  to  be  his  political 
duty  to  favour  Islam,  while  ignoring  Protestant  missions  and 
the  ancient  Koptic  Church,  we  cannot  expect  any  early  favour- 
able change  for  the  better  in  Egypt.  In  Turkey  religious 
liberty  was  legally  established  by  the  celebrated  firman  hatti 
humayoun.  But  owing  to  the  fanaticism  of  the  lower  officials 
as  much  as  to  the  ill  will  of  the  central  authorities,  this  has 
hitherto  remained  little  more  than  a  paper  privilege.  It  is  to 
be  lamented  that  the  powers  whose  influence  in  Turkey  is 
controlling  do  not  exercise  greater  pressure  to  enforce  the  ob- 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    79 

servance  of  rights  that  have  been  oflBcially  granted.  In  spite 
of  the  Tiatti  humayoun  conversions  are  most  difficult  and 
perilous  in  Turkey,^  though  conditions  are  not  uniform  through- 
out the  empire.  Perhaps  it  is  in  Palestine  that  Protestant 
movements  of  any  kind  are  watched  with  the  greatest  sus- 
picion. On  the  other  hand  the  province  of  the  Lebanon  re- 
joices, since  1862,  in  a  Christian  governor  and  comparative 
freedom.  In  Persia  there  appears  to  be  the  prospect  of  an 
early  granting  of  religious  liberty  beyond  even  the  terms  of 
the  late  Shah's  edict.  And  even  now  extensive  mission  work 
is  possible,  in  spite  of  annoying  laws  and  official  hindrance. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  the  greatest  opposition  to  missionary 
effort  does  not  come  from  the  government.  It  proceeds  rather 
from  the  deep-rooted  popular  dislike  of  Christianity  as  a  re- 
ligion and  of  the  Christians  as  individuals,  and  from  the 
fanatic  hatred  of  converts  sanctioned  by  the  Koran.  Thus 
opposition  to  Christian  missions  is  by  superior  and  inferior 
officials  as  well  as  by  the  common  people  considered  to  be  the 
proper  attitude  of  a  faithful  Muhammadan.  The  strictest 
laws  are  effective  in  keeping  this  fanaticism  within  bounds 
only  in  so  far  as  Europeans  are  continually  on  the  alert  to  in- 
sist, with  force  if  need  be,  upon  their  execution.  There  can  be 
no  hope  of  a  speedy  change  for  the  better  in  this  respect.  No 
laws  of  toleration  in  India  can  prevent  the  all-powerful  caste  sys- 
tem from  making  conversion  to  Christianity  among  the  higher 
castes  a  matter  of  life  and  death.  No  man  knows  how  many 
are  secretly  murdered  rather  than  that  they  should  become 
Christians.  To  overcome  such  deep-rooted  opposition,  sanc- 
tioned as  it  is  by  religion,  only  a  long-continued  exhibition  of 
the  beauty  of  the  Christian  life  and  of  Christian  service  avails. 
If  in  general  it  be  the  first  duty  of  missions  to  win  confidence 
and  to  overthrow  the  barriers  of  prejudice,  suspicion,  and 
fanaticism,  this  is  an  especially  important  task  in  the  Near 

'It  is  well  known  that  the  constitution  of  July  24,  1908,  has  oflScially 
granted  religious  liberty  in  Turkey.  Experience  alone  will  show  whether  this 
"irade"  will  be  put  into  practice  with  greater  fairness  than  the  former  liberal 
laws. 


8o      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

East.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  a  task  of  unusual  difficulty,  but  it  is 
now  possible  of  achievement,  and  the  sooner  it  is  seriously  at- 
tempted, the  better. 

Mission  work  among  the  Muhammadans  must  for  a  time 
differ  greatly  from  that  among  other  peoples.  Its  policy  is 
conciliatory  rather  than  aggressive.  Popular  movements  in 
favour  of  Christianity  cannot  be  expected  for  a  long  time  to 
come.  It  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  be  quiet  about  such  few 
conversions  as  occur,  and  to  be  reticent  in  mission  reports.  In 
preaching  the  Gospel,  anything  that  might  excite  Muhara- 
madan  fanaticism  is  to  be  avoided,  attention  rather  being 
drawn  to  the  points  of  contact  between  the  two  religions. 
There  are  four  kinds  of  preparatory  work  which  specially 
recommend  themselves  :  medical  7nissio7is  with  their  clear  and 
winning  message  of  Christian  compassion  ;  the  distribution  of 
Christian  literature,  including  the  Bible,  Avhich  has  the  express 
sanction  of  the  Koran,  and  simple  Christian  books  written 
preferably  in  the  form  of  dialogues,  so  liked  by  Orientals ; 
Christian  schools,  primary  and  advanced,  which  should  be 
opened  as  soon  as  they  can  be  filled  with  Muhammadan  chil- 
dren ;  and  women^s  work  in  the  harems,  which,  with  its  warm 
personal  sympathy,  for  the  first  time  lets  the  light  in  upon  those 
fastnesses  of  fanaticism,  the  Muhammadan  homes.  All  these 
methods  demand  patience  and  quiet,  diligent  labour.  They 
shun  publicity.  For  such  patient  work  of  preparation  one  is 
inclined  to  feel  that  even  free-lance  missionaries  may  be  use- 
ful, if  they  be  not  too  fanciful  and  sectarian  in  their  views, 
and  it  is  no  great  misfortune  that  many  of  them  are  seeking  in 
Palestine  and  Syria,  latterly  also  in  Egypt,  a  sphere  of 
work. 

9.  The  Message  of  Christianity  to  Islam} 
A  distinction  must  be  made  between  the  apologetic  of  theo- 
logians  in  Christian  lands,  intended  to  prove  the  truth  of 

'Cf.  "  Methods  of  Mission  Work  among  Moslems,"  Papers  of  the  Conference  of 
Muhammadan  Missionaries  held  in  Cairo  April  4th  to  9th,  1906.  The  papers  of 
this  valuable  book  do  not  cover  the  entire  ground,  but  they  contain  a  great 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    8l 

Christianity  as  opposed  to  Islam  to  the  mind  and  conscience 
of  Christians,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  arguments  used  by 
missionaries  meant  to  lead  Muhammadans  to  break  with 
Jtheir  religion  and  to  come  to  a  whole-hearted  conviction 
of  the  truth  of  Christianity.  The  former  method  is  the 
easier  of  the  two,  as  it  can  confine  itself  to  a  few  chief 
themes,  e.  g.,  how  much  Islam  has  derived  from  Chris- 
tianity, and  the  inferiority  of  the  character  of  Muhammad 
and  the  low  moral  standard  inculcated  by  his  example,  the 
formalism  of  his  religious  exercises,  and  the  sterility  of  his 
conception  of  God.  The  task  of  the  missionary  is  a  more 
difficult  and  complicated  matter,  requiring  as  much  patience 
as  wisdom. 

It  must  at  the  outset  be  taken  into  consideration  that  the 
various  Moslem  populations  stand  on  widely  separated  spir- 
itual and  intellectual  levels,  and  have  been  permeated  by  the 
religion  of  Islam  in  very  varying  degree.  In  many  tribes 
of  India  and  Central  Africa,  as  well  as  among  the  Druses, 
Nusairiyeh  and  others,  Islam  is  but  a  veneer,  beneath 
which  animistic  heathenism  or  deteriorated  forms  of  Semitic 
religion  have  been  ever  retained.  It  is  a  disadvantage 
for  the  missionary  that  these  ignorant  semi-Muharamadans 
like  to  retire  behind  the  cover  of  their  religious  leaders, 
whom  they  expect  to  ward  off  the  Christian  preachers. 
Even  among  cultured  Muhammadan  nations  a  more  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  Islamic  theology  is  by  no  means 
common,    because   the   Koran   may  be  read  only  in  Arabic 

number  of  important  observations.  Some  few  of  these  we  give  :  In  public  ar- 
gument it  is  advisable  not  to  attack  Muhammad  or  the  Korau.  In  countries 
where  Islam  is  split  up  into  sects,  it  is  well  to  take  the  doctrines  peculiar  to 
such  sects  into  consideration,  for  they  sometimes  offer  excellent  opportunities  of 
introducing  such  fundamental  Christian  doctrines  as  the  Incarnation,  Atone- 
ment, etc.  In  comparing  the  Bible  with  the  Koran,  it  must  be  kept  in  mind 
that  the  Christian  and  the  Islamic  views  of  inspiration  differ  (Cf.  The  Church 
Miss.  Rev.,  1907,  pp.  295,  355,  549).  Islamic  inspiration  is  a  dead,  mechanical, 
verbal  thing,  while  the  Christian  theory  is  that  the  Bible  has  been  written  by 
holy  men  of  God  under  the  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  a  record  of  the  deal- 
ings of  Divine  Providence. 


82      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

and  the  best  products  of  Islamic  thought  are  to  be  found 
only  in  Arabic  books.  Thus  the  missionary  on  coming 
to  any  Muhammadan  people  has  to  ascertain  carefully  to 
what  depth  Islamic  modes  of  thought  and  customs  have 
covered  the  lower  stratum  of  heathenism,  to  what  extent 
Islam  has  penetrated  that  heathenism. 

There  are  five  chief  strongholds  of  Islam,  which  the  mis- 
sionary must  be  mindful  of.  (1)  Inherent  conviction  of  the 
truth  of  Islam.  In  the  lower  forms  of  animistic  heathenism 
the  missionary  everywhere  meets  with  a  feeling  of  uncer. 
tainty,  which  proves  these  animistic  ideas  to  be  comparatively 
loosely  rooted  and  consequently  ready  to  yield  to  a  well- 
timed  attack.  Islam,  on  the  contrary,  exhibits  an  astounding 
self-assurance,  always  culminating  in  the  motto :  There  is  no 
God  but  Allah  and  Muhammad  is  his  Prophet,  Even  the 
evident  superiority  of  the  Christian  culture  does  not  cause 
the  faithful  Muhammadan  to  waver  in  this  conviction.  The 
Moslem  commonly  argues  that  Christians  may  be  superior  in 
worldly  matters,    but   that   Moslems  have  the  true  religion. 

(2)  The  Monotheistic  concejption  of  God.  The  fulcrum  on 
which  to  rest  his  lever  in  order  to  loosen  the  hold  of  poly- 
theistic or  animistic  heathenism,  the  missionary  finds  in  the 
protest  against  the  disintegration  of  the  Deity,  in  setting 
forth  the  one  only  God,  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Kuler,  who 
destroys  the  kingdom  of  demons  and  establishes  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  The  first  step  in  conversion  then  is  the  turning  from 
the  worship  of  many  gods,  ancestors,  or  spirits  and  the  sub- 
jecting of  one's  self  to  the  God  of  the  Christian  and  to  His 
Son.  It  is  not  so  with  the  Muhammadan.  However  great  a 
part  spirits  play  in  his  thoughts  and  actions,  yet  belief  in  the 
absolute  power  of  Allah  is  part  and  parcel  of  his  existence. 

(3)  Moslem  eschatology.  Islam  is  everywhere,  especially 
where  it  is  victoriously  advancing,  strong  in  eschatology. 
All  the  forces  of  volcanic  activity  within  it — Jehad,  Mahdi, 
Imam — these  have  an  eschatological  character.  The  kernel 
of  the  religious  consciousness  of  a  Moslem  is :  The  Moslem 
is  partaker  of  the  joys  of  a  sensually  imagined  paradise,  the 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    83 

non-Moslem  goes  to  hell.  And  this  eschatology  has  the  sanc- 
tion of  a  divine  revelation.  (4)  The  Muliammadan  ideal  of 
piety.  A  heathen  believes  himself  surrounded  by  countless 
gods  and  demons,  who  claim  his  devotion  and  whom  he  must 
attempt  to  satisfy.  But  he  is  never  sure  whether  he  has 
succeeded  in  this.  The  more  religious  his  nature  is,  the  less 
satisfied  is  he  under  this  constant  pressure.  How  much  easier 
is  the  Moslem's  creed.  Let  him  but  observe  his  hours  of 
prayer,  give  the  prescribed  alms,  and  make  a  pilgrimage  to 
Mecca  once  in  his  life,  his  relations  with  Allah  are  then  quite 
in  order.  His  assurance  that  Allah  is  satisfied  with  him  is 
not  shaken  even  though  sickness  and  sudden  death  overtake 
him.  He  is  sure  of  the  joys  of  paradise,  though  he  may,  in 
other  respects,  be  a  scoundrel.  To  get  the  better  of  inferior 
demons  he  need  but  put  the  powers  of  Allah  in  action,  which 
he  accomplishes  by  magic.  Eeligious  scruples  or  qualms  of 
conscience  do  not  trouble  him.  (5)  Mystical  communion  with 
God.  The  more  religious  natures  find  scope  in  the  mysticism 
of  Islam,  which  they  are  taught  leads  unfailingly  to  com- 
munion with  Allah,  or  even  to  total  absorption  with  the 
Deity.  It  is  this  belief  that  animates  those  who  participate 
in  religious  revivals  or  political  disturbances.  It  is  not  ad- 
visable to  direct  the  attack  against  these  five  strongholds  at 
the  outset.  No  general,  when  laying  siege  to  a  fortress,  as- 
saults straightway  the  strongest  point.  Such  misdirected  at- 
tacks only  provoke  bitterness  and  inflame  the  fanaticism 
peculiar  to  Islam. 

The  preaching  of  the  missionaries  should  proceed  on 
the  following  three  lines  :  (1)  Preparatory  teaching.  The 
doctrines  of  Islam  may  be  traced  to  three  sources,  namely,  pre- 
Muhammadan  Arabic  heathenism,  Judaism,  and  Christianity. 
Ideas  from  all  three  sources  were  current  in  Arabia  before  the 
time  of  Muhammad  and  had  become  thoroughly  intermingled. 
In  the  person  of  Muhammad  and  in  the  religion  he  founded 
they  were  fused  into  a  new  unity.  It  is  therefore  incorrect  to 
regard  Islam  either  as  a  rationalistic  Christian  sect,  or  as  a 
Jewish  sect,  or  as  a   Christianized  development  of  Arabian 


84      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

heathenism.^  Yet  the  Christian  missionary  will  find  it  easy 
to  lay  emphasis  on  the  points  of  contact  between  Islam  and 
Christianity,  thus  winning  an  opportunity  for  the  presentation 
of  his  wider  message,  {a)  The  Koran  teaches  that  the  Bible 
is  the  revealed  Word  of  God,  but  that  Christians  have  falsified 
the  text  in  their  own  interests.  The  group  of  ideas  growing 
out  of  this  teaching,  with  the  errors  involved,  must  engage 
the  close  attention  of  Christian  apologists.  Skillfully  used, 
they  are  a  forceful  appeal  to  Muhammadans  to  study  the 
Bible  carefully  and  thoroughly,  comparing  it  with  the  Koran. 
If  they  become  convinced  that  it  is  not  true  that  the  Bible 
has  been  tampered  with  by  Christians,  and  are  thus  compelled 
to  admit  that  the  Bible  is  the  pure  Word  of  God,  the  way  is 
open  for  calm,  practical  discussion.  A  commentary  on  the 
effectiveness  of  such  preparatory  work,  as  conducted  for 
instance  in  India,  is  the  curious  fact  that  some  years  ago  a  depu- 
tation of  moUahs  from  Northern  India  appeared  in  the  El 
Azhar  mosque  of  Cairo,  to  enquire  after  the  pure  text  of  the 
Bible  as  opposed  to  the  falsified  Christian  versions.^ 

(h)  The  Koran  contains  many  of  the  Bible  stories,  though 
with  abundant  apocryphal  excrescences.  It  is  of  great  impor- 
tance to  compare  these  Muharamadan  legends  with  the  original 
stories,  and  to  point  to  their  unreasonable  and  unreliable 
character,  thus  undermining  confidence  in  the  infallibility  and 
authority  of  the  Koran.  This  is  by  no  means  easy  or  pleasant 
work.     Tact  and  conscientiousness  are  needed,  if,  in  addition 

^  Abrabam  Geiger  (in  his  "  Judentum  und  Islam  ")  as  well  as  the  rabbinist  Em. 
Deutsch  (Literarischer  Nachlass,  article  on  Islam)  show  with  great  cleverness  and 
erudition,  how  much  Muhammad  was  influenced  in  his  theories  and  practice  by 
Talmudio  Judaism.  The  verdict  of  both  these  scholars  is  that  Islam  is  nothing 
else  than  a  form  of  Judaism  modified  to  s\iit  Arab  requirements,  plus  a  recogni- 
tion of  the  prophethood  of  Jesus  and  Muhammad.  Dr.  Joh.  Lepsius,  on  the  other 
band,  maintained  in  his  lecture  before  the  conference  of  Muhammadau  mission- 
aries at  Cairo,  that  Islam  is  a  degenerate  form  of  rationalized  Oriental  Christianity. 

'  This  appeal  to  the  Bible  naturally  occupies  a  large  place  in  controversial 
literature.  To  refute  with  convincing  power  the  charge  that  Christians  have 
falsified  the  Bible  for  doctrinal  purposes  is  the  chief  aim  of  the  interesting  book 
"Sweet  Firstfruits,"  widely  known  even  in  England  and  America  through  the 
excellent  translation  of  Sir  Wm.  Muir. 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    85 

to  pulling  down  the  walls  of  error,  the  establishing  of  the 
authority  of  the  Bible  is  to  be  achieved.  But  it  is  very 
effectual  in  the  case  of  truth-seeking  Moslems. 

(c)  The  Koran  raises  Jesus  so  nearly  to  the  level  of  Muham- 
mad, giving  Him  indeed  in  certain  respects  a  much  higher  stand- 
ing, that  it  is  well  worth  while  thoroughly  to  exploit  such  pas- 
sages in  the  Koran  as  contain  comparisons  between  Muham- 
mad and  Christ.  In  this  connection,  the  foolish  statements  of 
the  Koran  concerning  the  death  and  resurrection  of  the  Lord 
may  be  exposed,  and  the  eminently  superior  moral  character 
of  Jesus  be  urged  on  the  conscience.  His  holiness  as  compared 
with  the  immorality  of  Muhammad.  Such  preparatory  work 
naturally  demands  of  the  missionary  a  careful  examination  of 
facts  and  calm  judgment.  It  is  therefore  in  the  main  a  method 
less  suitable  for  public  preaching,  being  more  effectual  when 
used  in  apologetic  literature.  It  is,  perhaps,  superfluous  to 
urge  that  missionaries  and  colporteurs  should  be  well  versed 
in  the  contents  of  the  books  they  distribute,  and  should  ever 
be  prepared  to  elucidate  and  enlarge  upon  the  subjects  dis- 
cussed in  such  books.  Muhammadans  have  an  almost  diseased 
predilection  for  religious  discussions,  which  wise  missionaries 
will  endeavour  to  lead  by  some  means  or  other  to  bear  upon 
such  subjects  as  those  mentioned  above. 

(2)  The  j>reaching  of  the  central  doctrine  of  salvation. 
Whatever  may  be  its  advantages,  yet  it  is  a  weary  way  that 
leads  from  the  Koran  through  the  Bible  to  Christ,  and  it  will 
be  trodden  only  by  the  more  educated.  The  decisive  question 
for  Moslems  as  for  other  non-Christians  is  whether  they  lay 
hold  on  the  salvation  in  Christ.  If  they  are  to  do  so,  this 
salvation  must  be  presented  to  them  in  such  a  way  as  to 
satisf}'-  and  convince  them.  But  apart  from  the  prohibition 
of  public  preaching  in  some  Muhammadan  countries,  great 
difficulties  confront  the  missionaries.  Even  in  the  simplest 
presentation  of  the  atoning  work  of  Christ,  His  divinity  must 
be  insisted  on,  nor  can  those  religious  truths  which  underlie 
the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Trinity  be  passed  by  in  silence.  Yet 
these  two  doctrines,  namely,  the  Divinity  of  Christ  and  the 


86      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Trinity,  are  the  very  doctrines  which  have  ever  been  the 
great  stumbling-blocks  for  Moslems,  and  which  excite  in  them 
the  most  violent  opposition.  To  us  they  are  the  heart  of 
Christianity.  And  our  chief  object  must  be  to  lead  Moslems 
to  a  full  belief  in  Jesus  as  the  crucified  Son  of  God.  Here 
no  compromise  is  possible.  The  most  effectual  method  of 
procedure  is  to  make  known  in  as  full  a  measure  as  possible 
the  Bible  narratives,  by  their  help  leading  one's  hearers  to 
feel  a  personal  interest  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  gracious  pur- 
poses of  God  in  sending  His  Son  to  redeem  the  world.  The 
preaching  of  the  Gospel  will  be  the  more  effective  if  it  can  be 
illustrated  by  pictures  in  the  daytime  and  by  the  magic 
lantern  at  night.  Starting  with  the  knowledge  of  what  God 
has  done  to  save  the  world  the  Moslem  will  come  to  a  con- 
viction of  his  own  sinfulness.  The  reverse  process  is  rarely 
possible,  for  a  Moslem's  inherited  faith,  according  to  which 
be  is  content  with  a  purely  formal  fulfilment  of  its  compara- 
tively easy  requirements,  renders  a  direct  appeal  to  his  con- 
science very  difficult.  If  Allah  does  not  demand  of  him  more 
than  it  has  been  his  custom  to  perform,  why  should  he  trouble 
himself  further  ?  Only  the  inexorable  logic  of  the  Gospel  can 
shatter  such  thoroughgoing  self-satisfaction.  At  the  same 
time  the  missionary  among  Muhammadans  must  ever  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  these  central  truths  of  Christianity  may 
readily  excite  the  fanaticism  of  his  hearers  and  cause  them  to 
close  their  ears  to  his  message.  Yet  however  difficult  such 
direct  preaching  may  be,  the  missionary  will  never,  absorbed 
in  the  slow  preparatory  work,  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the 
definite  act  of  conversion  can  be  brought  about  only  by  laying 
hold  on  Christ. 

In  this  difficulty  we  have  at  least  a  partial  explanation  of 
the  fact  that  mission  work  among  Muhammadans  has  thus  far 
resulted  only  in  individual  conversions,  not  in  general  move- 
ments. Muhammadans  cannot  be  led  to  embrace  Christianity 
by  a  preaching  of  the  first  article  of  the  creed,  since  they 
already  believe  in  one  God.  Contrast  this  state  of  affairs 
with  that  which  exists  among  many  heathen  peoples  concern- 


The  Muhammadan  World  and  the  Eastern  Churches    87 

ing  whom  Johannes  Warneck,  in  his  book  "  The  Living  Christ 
and  the  Dying  Heathenism,"  shows  convincingly  that,  when 
congregations  are  gathered  from  their  midst,  the  first  step 
consists  in  turning  from  the  worship  of  false  gods  and  demons 
to  the  worship  of  the  one  God,  while  comparatively  few 
advance  to  a  complete  acceptance  of  the  redeeming  work  of 
Christ.  Muhammadans,  on  the  contrary,  can  be  brought 
into  the  Christian  Church  only  by  persuading  them  of  the 
truth  of  Kedemption  through  the  Son  of  God,  an  undertaking 
the  extreme  difficulty  of  which  we  have  pointed  out.  No 
wonder,  then,  that  few  Moslems  find  the  way  to  the  Christian 
Church.  Muhammadan  work  is  like  that  among  the  Jews, 
who  also  already  believe  in  one  God. 

(3)  Subsequent  preaching.  "When  ignorant  heathen  accept 
Christianity  they  have  passed  from  under  the  dominion  of 
demons  into  the  Kingdom  of  God.  They  feel  that  they  are 
thereby  bound  to  conform  to  the  rules  of  conduct  in  this 
Kingdom.  They  display  great  willingness  to  cast  out  the 
leaven  of  heathenism  and  permit  the  leaven  of  Christianity  to 
work  through  their  thoughts  and  actions.  Islam,  on  the 
contrary,  is  too  stereotyped  and  thorough  a  system  of  thought 
and  conduct  to  admit  of  an  easy  advance  in  "  putting  off  the 
old  man." 

A  Moslem  who  has  embraced  Christianity  must  recast  all 
his  ideas  of  God  in  conformity  with  his  new  Christian  knowl- 
edge. He  must  replace  his  former  arbitrary,  despotic  God  by 
one  of  ethical  excellence.  Almost  more  difficult  is  it  for  him 
to  free  himself  from  that  fatalism,  which,  in  Islam,  is  a 
correlative  of  belief  in  the  almighty  power  of  God,  and  to  feel 
himself  to  be  in  the  Christian  relation  of  a  child  to  the  Father, 
who  orders  the  whole  life  of  His  children  according  to  His  wise 
counsel,  but  who  at  the  same  time  wills  that  we  should  work 
out  our  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling. 

Side  by  side  with  this  revolution  in  his  ideas  is  the  necessary 
adaptation  of  his  life  to  the  Christian  ideal  in  Christ.  This 
is  the  more  difficult  since,  roughly  speaking,  what  occupies  a 
central  position  in  the  ethics  of  the  Christian  lies  on  the 


88      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

periphery  of  the  moral  instincts  of  theMuhammadan,  and  vice 
versa.  Muhammadanisra  lays  chief  stress  on  individual  com- 
mands, Christianity  on  a  right  condition  of  the  heart.  The 
prime  virtue  of  Islam  is  obedience,  submission  to  the  incom- 
prehensible laws  of  God,  while  the  Christian  gives  love  the 
first  place,  love  which  delights  to  do  the  will  of  God  (Rom.  8  : 
15).  The  Christian  ideal  takes  possession  of  one  after  another 
of  the  ethical  wastes  in  the  Muhammadan  life,  doing  away 
with  polygamy  and  slavery,  and  laying  a  foundation  for  the 
elevation  of  woman. 

It  is  only  in  the  bright  light  of  Christian  ethics  that  the 
sensual  eschatology  of  Islam  with  its  hitherto  intoxicating 
power  fades  away,  giving  place  to  the  pure  flame  of  the 
Christian  hope,  founded  on  faith  and  love  towards  Christ. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  conversion  of  every 
Muhammadan  will  proceed  in  this  same  manner,  for  the 
workings  of  the  spiritual  life  are  very  complex.  Particularly 
applicable  to  conversions  are  the  words  of  the  Lord  :  "  The 
wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth  and  thou  hearest  the  voice 
thereof,  but  knowest  not  whence  it  coraeth,  and  whither  it 
goeth  "  (John  3  :  8).  Still,  experience  indicates  the  lines  along 
which  to  conduct  missionary  preaching,  and,  in  proportion  as 
Moslem  fanaticism  is  known  to  be  easily  aroused,  it  is  impor- 
tant to  heed  such  indications. 


II 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  PROTESTANT  MISSIONARY 
ENDEAVOUR 

IT  was  still  in  the  period  of  the  German  Keforraation  that 
Freiherr  Hans  Ungnad  von  Sonegg,  a  Protestant  who 
had  been  a  captain  in  the  Austrian  army  in  Hungary  and 
in  Steierraark  in  the  wars  against  the  Ottomans,  began  his 
indefatigable  labours.  In  his  old  age  (1540-1560)  after  he 
had  left  his  home  for  his  faith's  sake,  he  spent  his  entire  for- 
tune on  the  translation  of  Protestant  literature,  25,600  books 
in  four  years  into  the  languages  of  the  Balkans,  "  hoping  that 
by  this  means  the  pure  teaching  of  God's  Word  might  be  in- 
troduced into  Turkey  and  that  the  All-merciful  would  in  this 
way  smite  the  Turks  with  the  sword  of  His  almighty  power 
as  He  had  exposed  and  smitten  popery  by  the  hand  of  Martin 
Luther  of  blessed  memory"  [Christl.  Orient,  1897,  p.  3flf.). 
Many  German  princes  and  free  cities  contributed  considerable 
sums  to  this  in  its  own  way  great  literary  mission  enterprise. 
On  the  threshold  of  the  history  of  Protestant  Missions  in 
the  ISTear  East  there  stands  an  interesting  figure,  the  Patriarch 
of  Constantinople,  Cyril  Lucaris  (1572-1638).  Born  in  Crete 
and  educated  in  good  schools  in  Venice  and  Padua,  Lucaris 
was  raised  to  the  chair  of  the  Orthodox  Greek  patriarchate  of 
Alexandria  in  1603.  It  was  here  he  seems  first  to  have  come 
into  touch  with  Protestantism.  He  describes  the  circum- 
stances thus  in  a  letter : 

Ubi  vero  Deo  placuit  misericordi  nos  illuminare  ut  animad- 
verteremus  quo  in  errore  versabamur,  mature  cogitare  incepi- 
mus,  quid  opus  esset  facere.  Quid  ergo  feci  ?  Libris  aliquot 
evangelicorum  doctorum  quos  Oriens  nosternon  quod  nunquam 
viderit,  sed  neque  utrum  essent,  obstantibus  pontificiis  cen- 
suris,  nunquam  audiverit,  opera  et  favore  amicorum  acquisitis, 

89 


go      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

spiritu  sancto  assiduis  orationibus  invocato,  per  triennium 
graecae  et  latinae  ecclesiaB  cum  ea,  quae  est  reformata  coUavi 
(sic !). 

He  had,  we  see,  derived  his  acquaintance  with  Protestant 
teaching  chiefly  from  the  writings  of  the  Reformed  theologians 
which  he  had  diligently  studied  for  three  years.  He  came 
thus  to  see  to  what  extent  his  Church  had  been  corrupted  by 
superstition.  He  says :  "  Ecclesiam  graecam  nil  tarn  pes- 
sundatj  ut  superstitio."  Nevertheless  he  was  all  that  time 
still  far  from  planning  to  introduce  reforms,  thinking  these 
practicable  only,  "  magno  cum  scandalo  totius  christianitatis." 
A  change  came  when  he  was  raised  in  1620  to  the  patriarchal 
chair  of  Constantinople,  by  far  the  most  important  and  influ- 
ential position  in  his  Church.  He  now  came  into  personal 
connection  with  Cornelius  Hego,  the  Protestant  Dutch  ambas- 
sador in  Stamboul,  and  with  Rev.  Anton  Leger,  chaplain  of 
the  Dutch  legation  there  from  1628  to  1636.  Leger  exercised 
a  great  influence  upon  Lucaris,  who,  in  consequence,  formed 
the  large  plan  of  reforming  his  Church  thoroughly  after  the 
pattern  of  Calvinism.  His  first  care  was  to  have  the  Bible 
translated  into  vulgar  Greek.  This  was  undertaken  by  Max- 
imus  Caliiupolita,  aided  by  Lucaris,  who  also  wrote  a  preface. 
The  book  was  printed  in  Geneva,  but  it  was  only  in  1638, 
after  the  death  of  Lucaris,  that  this  first  modern  Greek  edition 
appeared.  Schools  were  also  built,  but  they  do  not  appear  to 
have  been  continued  for  any  length  of  time.  The  most  im- 
portant act  of  Lucaris  was  the  publishing  of  his  "  Confessio  " 
in  1629.  Within  a  few  years  it  went  through  nineteen  edi- 
tions and  was  translated  into  most  of  the  languages  of  civilized 
Europe.  His  confession  is,  according  to  Gass,  founded  on 
Calvinistic  doctrine,  but  drawn  up  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
accommodate  it  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  form  of  expression 
and  the  creed  of  the  Greek  Church.  Hardly  had  Lucaris 
come  out  publicly  with  his  Evangelical  convictions,  when 
persecution  set  in  from  all  quarters.  The  Jesuits  were  his 
bitter  enemies,  and  even  after  his  death  they  slandered  him 
in  their  writings.    Even  in  his  own  Church  he  met  with  sharp 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour    gi 

opposition.  Aud  it  was  by  an  intrigue  of  bis  opponents  that 
be  came  to  bis  death.  They  accused  him  to  the  Sultan  Murad, 
on  the  eve  of  his  entering  upon  a  campaign  against  the  Per- 
sians, of  stirring  up  the  Cossacks  against  him.  Believing  this 
false  accusation,  the  Sultan  at  once  ordered  Lucaris  to  be 
strangled  by  the  Janissaries  and  his  body  to  be  thrown  into 
the  sea. 

Lucaris  was  the  most  impressive  personality  in  the  Ortho- 
dox Greek  Church  of  the  seventeenth  century.  For  decades 
after  his  death  the  movement  which  he  originated  occupied 
and  divided  the  minds  of  men  in  his  Church.  It  was  the  first 
and  only  attempt  of  one  in  a  leading  position  to  reform  the 
Greek  Church  from  within,  in  the  Protestant  sense  of  the 
word.  False  accusation  and  assassination  put  an  end  to  it. 
"Who  can  say  whether  Lucaris  was  made  of  the  stuff  to  be  the 
reformer  of  his  Church,  or  whether  this  attempt  to  reform 
that  Church  after  the  pattern  of  the  Calvinism  of  Geneva  and 
Holland  would  in  any  case  have  been  unsuccessful  ? 

1.  Peter  Heyling 
A  younger  contemporary  of  Cyril  Lucaris  was  Peter  Hey- 
ling, a  learned  man  from  Liibeck  in  Germany.  While  study- 
ing in  Paris  he  formed  a  close  friendship  and  alliance  with 
several  other  Germans,  who  resolved  to  take  the  Gospel  to  the 
dead  Churches  of  the  East.  Two  of  these  friends  went  thither ; 
one,  Blumenhagen  by  name,  soon  died  a  violent  death  in  Con- 
stantinople ;  the  other.  Dome,  after  a  journey  of  several 
years'  duration  through  Asia  Minor,  Syria  and  Egypt,  re- 
turned disheartened  to  Germany.  Peter  Heyling  went  to 
Egypt  in  1632  to  try  to  get  thence  to  Abyssinia.  He  spent 
several  years  in  the  monasteries  of  the  Egyptian  desert  with 
the  purpose  of  learning  the  Arabic  and  Syriac  languages 
thoroughly,  throughout  that  time  being  often  bitterly  perse- 
cuted by  the  emissaries  of  the  Eoman  Propaganda,  who  did 
not  wish  to  permit  this  pronounced  Lutheran  to  obtain  any 
influence.  In  1634  he  found  an  opportunity  to  go  to  Abys- 
sinia.   Negus  Basilides,  who  had  expelled  the  Koman  Arch- 


92      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

bishop  and  all  the  Jesuits,  sent  an  embassy  to  Cairo  requesting 
of  the  Koptic  Patriarch  that  a  Monophysitic  Abuna  be  once 
more  appointed,  thus  restoring  the  old  connection  with  the 
Koptic  Church.  Heyling  joined  this  embassy  on  their  journey 
home.  He  was  kindly  received  at  the  Court  at  Gondar. 
Many  sons  of  noblemen  were  put  under  his  charge  to  be  edu- 
cated. The  Negus  is  said  to  have  given  him  his  own  daughter 
to  wife,  and  to  have  entrusted  him  with  several  high  offices 
of  state.  It  is  also  reported  that  he  translated  parts  of  the 
New  Testament,  including  St.  John's  Gospel,  into  Amharic, 
and  compiled  a  code  of  laws  based  on  the  Roman  code.  But 
none  of  these  reports  can  be  traced  to  its  sources.  About 
1652  Heyling,  on  his  way  back  to  Egypt,  is  said  to  have  been 
forced  by  a  Turkish  pasha  to  choose  between  Islam  and  death, 
and  to  have  died  courageously  confessing  his  faith.  Whether 
he  was  successful  as  a  missionary  in  Abyssinia,  it  is  difficult 
to  say.     What  is  certain  is  that  he  had  no  successor.^ 

A  century  passed  by  before  any  active  interest  in  the  Ori- 
ental Churches  was  again  shown  by  Protestants,  although 
Augustus  Hermann  Francke,  incited  thereto  by  the  learned 
orientalist  Ludolf,  Jr.,  sent  several  young  candidates  for  the 
ministry  to  Russia  and  Constantinople  to  try  to  elevate  the 
Greek  Church  spiritually.  After  the  year  1T39,  the  Moravian 
Church,  in  its  first  consuming  zeal  for  missions,  tried  to  gain 
a  footing  in  the  Christian  Orient.  But  all  these  attempts 
failed,  whether  in  Constantinople  (1740),  where  they  tried  to 
come  into  touch  with  the  Greek  authorities,  in  the  newly  ac- 
cessible colonies  of  Roumania  (also  1740),  or  in  Persia  (1747- 
1750).  Nor  could  they  find  entrance  into  Abyssinia.  In 
Egypt  the  able  physician,  Rudolph  Wilhelm  Hocker  suc- 
ceeded, after  various  vain  attempts,  in  introducing  a  Moravian 
Mission,  which,  however,  was  confined  from  the  very  begin- 

*Hiob  Ludolf,  Ad  suam  historiam  sethiopicam  Commentarius.  Frankfurt, 
1691,  with  Appendix.  Dr.  Job.  Miohaelis,  Sonderbarer  Lebenslauf  Herrn  Peter 
Heylings,  Halle,  1724.  Founded  on  tbese  two  books,  Allgemeine  Missions' 
zeitschrift,  1876,  pp,  206-223. 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour   93 

ning  to  evangelization  among  the  Kopts,  where,  on  prin- 
ciple, no  attempt  was  made  to  induce  converts  to  leave  their 
Church.  Hocker  and  his  assistants,  most  of  whom  were  plain 
workmen,  laboured  for  fifteen  years  (17G8-1783)  in  Cairo  and 
Behnesseh.  But  as  no  definite  results  appeared,  and  as  the 
disturbed  state  of  the  country  rendered  it  unsafe  for  the 
Brethren  to  remain  there,  they  were  recalled  in  1783.  Nor 
did  their  work  apparently  leave  any  marked  traces. 

2.  Henry  Martyn 
An  eminent  young  English  missionary,  Henry  Martyn,  ap- 
peared like  a  brilliant  comet  in  Persia ;  but  only  for  a  short 
time,  for  he  was  too  quickly  consumed  by  the  very  fire  of  his 
zeal.  Born  in  1780,  he  died  in  1812  in  Tokat  in  Asia  Minor. 
This  young  man  by  the  intensity  of  his  spiritual  ardour  made 
so  deep  an  impression  on  his  fellow  workers  and  upon  mis- 
sionary circles  in  England  in  spite  of  the  brevity  of  his  career, 
that  he,  like  the  missionary  Bishop,  Eeginald  Heber,  in  India, 
who  was  also  still  a  young  man  when  he  died,  might  be  com- 
pared in  this  respect  with  Francis  Xavier.  Sent  as  a  chaplain 
to  India  in  1806,  he  laboured  until  1811  in  the  cantonments  of 
Dinajpur  and  Cawnpore,  ever  in  close  connection  with  his 
friends  Brown,  Corrie  and  Buchanan,  who,  like  himself,  were 
nicknamed  the  "  pious  chaplains."  In  addition  to  his  ofiicial 
duties,  he  strove  unremittingly  to  bring  the  Gospel  to  Hindu 
and  Muhammadan.  Indefatigable  as  he  was,  and  aided  by  an 
unusual  proficiency  in  acquiring  new  languages,  Martyn 
translated  the  whole  of  the  ]S"ew  Testament  into  Urdu  and 
Persian.  But  he  was  so  deeply  aware  of  the  imperfection  of 
the  latter  work  that  he  earnestly  desired  to  go  to  Persia,  in 
order  to  improve  his  knowledge  of  that  language  on  the 
ground.  He  therefore  went  in  1811  to  Shiraz,  the  celebrated 
seat  of  Persian  learning.  The  intense  heat  of  India  had 
already  thoroughly  exhausted  him,  and  on  the  five  months' 
voyage  from  Calcutta  to  Bushir  he  suffered  terribly  from  sea- 
sickness. Arrived  in  Persia,  he  soon  discovered  that  his  first 
translation   was  almost  worthless.     In  eight  months,  with 


94      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

failing  health,  he  completed  a  new  translation — a  heroic  feat, 
in  spite  of  the  evident  traces  it  bears  of  haste.  In  his  rare 
hours  of  leisure  he  cultivated  friendly  intercourse  with  learned 
Persian  theologians,  the  mollahs  and  mujtahids  of  Shiraz> 
arguing  half  the  night  with  them  about  the  fundamental 
truths  of  Christianity  and  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Bible. 
Having  finished  his  translation,  he  had  a  copy  of  it  made  and 
then  set  out  for  Tabriz  to  present  his  work  in  person  to  the 
Shah.  But  his  delicate  constitution  was  no  longer  able  to 
bear  the  hardships  of  travel  in  Persia.  He  arrived  in  Tabriz 
more  dead  than  alive,  and  needed  the  most  careful  nursing  for 
two  months  before  he  was  able  to  continue  his  journey  towards 
Constantinople.  The  harsh  treatment  of  his  Turkish  attend- 
ants, and  the  fatigues  of  mountain  travel  over  the  snow-clad 
passes  of  wild  Kurdistan,  were  the  last  straw.  He  died  in 
Tokat  on  the  16th  of  October,  1812.  The  British  Ambassador 
in  Teheran  presented,  in  Martyn's  stead,  his  manuscript 
translation  of  the  Kew  Testament  to  the  Shah,  whom  he  in- 
duced to  issue  so  laudatory  a  notice  of  the  work,  that  the 
translation,  after  it  had  been  printed  in  Kussia,  found  a  wide- 
spread circulation  in  Persia. 

S.     The  ^^Mediterranean  Mission^^   of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society 

Soon  after  its  institution  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
had  its  attention  drawn  to  the  Christian  Churches  of  the 
Levant.  Malta,  since  1800  a  British  possession,  seemed  to  be 
the  most  suitable  place  in  which  to  establish  a  mission,  from 
which  to  spread  the  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  over  all  the 
countries  bordering  on  the  Mediterranean,  especially  among 
the  Oriental  Churches  on  the  one  hand,  and  among  Islamic 
nations  on  the  other.  The  hope  was  entertained  that  a 
spiritual  revival  in  the  ancient  Churches  would  exercise  a 
beneficial  influence  on  the  Islamic  world  surrounding  them, 
thus  preparing  the  way  for  direct  mission  work  among 
Muhamraadans.  There  was  no  thought  of  founding  Prot- 
estant   Churches,  the    missionaries    being    particularly  ad- 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour   95 

monished  to  respect  the  customs  and  views  obtaining  in 
the  Oriental  Churches.  On  their  appointment  they  were 
instructed  to  cultivate  a  spirit  of  moderation,  tenderness  and 
caution.  "  Study  " — so  runs  a  striking  passage  in  their  in- 
structions— "  for  it  is  particularly  applicable  to  the  circum- 
stances of  an  enlightened  and  devout  Christian  labouring  in 
the  midst  of  a  benighted  and  corrupted  Oriental  Church, 
study  that  spirit  of  moderation,  delicacy  and  caution,  which 
was  exhibited  by  the  Apostles  towards  their  countrymen  the 
Jews,  and  towards  their  converts  from  among  the  Gentiles. 
Although  they  acted,  and  spoke,  and  wrote  under  the  im- 
mediate inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  foreknew  cer- 
tainly the  approaching  dissolution  of  the  Jewish  Polity,  yet, 
in  ritual  observances,  such  as  Circumcision,  Washings,  the 
Change  of  the  Sabbath,  Fasts,  Attendance  at  the  Temple  and 
in  the  Synagogues,  and,  generally,  in  all  the  discipline  of  the 
old  covenant  which  was  waxing  old  and  ready  to  vanish 
away,  they  were  temperate,  comfortable,  conciliatory,  and 
large-hearted.  .  .  .  Whenever  a  member  of  a  church 
which  holds  the  main  truths  of  the  Gospel,  though  with  a 
great  mixture  of  error,  discerns  that  error,  he  is  perhaps  dis- 
posed to  break  away  from  its  Communion.  It  requires  much 
wisdom,  candour,  and  fidelity,  to  guide  the  conscience  aright 
in  such  cases." 

So,  in  1815,  Malta  was  made  the  centre  of  the  "  Mediter- 
ranean Mission."  A  printing-press  was  set  up,  and  for  years 
a  flood  of  larger  and  smaller  publications  was  poured  forth. 
Among  these  were  editions  of  the  Bible  in  the  ancient  lan- 
guages of  the  Oriental  Churches,  and  also  in  the  modern 
tongues ;  e.  g.,  a  New  Testament  in  Modern  Greek,  prepared 
by  an  abbot  in  Constantinople,  called  Hilarion ;  Arabic 
translations  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  by  Eev.  C.  F.  Schlienz ;  and  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  in  Turkish  and  Amharic,  by  the  same  author.  Al- 
though the  Pope  in  1817  issued  a  bull  forbidding  the  reading 
of  these  translations,  and  the  Sultan,  probably  under  the  in- 
fluence  of  Koman  intrigue,  prohibited  the  introduction  of 


96      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Christian  books  into  Turkey,  yet  these  publications  were 
largely  bought  in  the  countries  bordering  the  Mediterranean. 
In  1819  Constantinople  was  occupied  as  a  second  mission 
centre,  but  was  abandoned  again  in  1821  in  consequence  of  an 
outbreak  of  fanaticism  among  the  Turks,  caused  by  the  Greek 
War  of  Independence.  Another  station  was  established  in 
1828  on  the  island  of  Syra,  where  Rev.  F.  A.  Hildner,  coming 
from  the  seminary  in  Basle,  founded  a  secondary  school,  the 
so-called  Pedagogium,  of  which  he  was  principal  for  forty-five 
years,  until  1876.  In  1830  Eev.  J.  Zeller  and  Eev.  P. 
Fjellstedt  were  stationed  in  Smyrna,  the  centre  of  Greek 
culture  in  Asia  Minor.  Thence  they  travelled  through  Asia 
Minor  and  the  neighbouring  countries,  preaching  everywhere, 
distributing  Christian  literature  and  founding  schools,  which, 
however,  dwindled  away  under  the  opposition  of  both  Greeks 
and  Jews.  In  Egypt  Rev.  J.  R.  T.  Lieder  and  Rev.  W. 
Kruse  had  begun  somewhat  earlier,  in  1825,  to  work  among 
the  Kopts,  meeting  with  no  opposition  from  the  Koptio 
Patriarch  Butros  (Peter)  YII  (1809-1854).  They  were  per- 
mitted to  distribute  Protestant  literature,  and  to  preach  in 
Koptic  churches  and  even  in  the  monasteries.  Lieder  founded 
a  training-school  for  boys  in  Cairo,  which  gradually  de- 
veloped under  his  care  into  a  theological  institution  for 
training  priests  for  the  Koptic  Church.  His  college,  however, 
could  not  be  maintained  because  the  Koptic  bishops  refused 
to  ordain  candidates  from  a  Protestant  school,  although  they 
were  otherwise  not  very  particular  with  regard  to  the  char- 
acter of  candidates  for  the  priesthood  ;  yet  one  of  Lieder's 
pupils  became  Abuna  of  the  Abyssinian  Church.  Lieder 
and  Kruse  laboured  in  Egypt  unwearyingly  for  thirty-five 
years,  in  face  of  many  disappointments.  Their  work  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  mission  in  Abyssinia. 

Although  the  "  Mediterranean  Mission  "  was  founded  by 
English  missionaries,  of  whom  Rev.  Wm.  Fowett,  who 
eventually  became  its  superintendent,  may  be  specially 
mentioned,  its  agents  were  almost  all  of  them  Germans, 
trained  in  the  mission  college  at  Basle.     Such  were  Rev.  C. 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour    97 

F.  Sclilienz  in  Malta,  Rev.  J.  R.  T.  Lieder  in  Cairo,  Rev.  J.  A. 
Jetter  in  Smyrna  and  the  pioneers  of  the  work  in  Abyssinia. 
The  number  of  agents  employed  by  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  in  this  mission  was  always  small,  and  these  few  were 
either  left  to  die  at  their  lonely  posts,  like  Hildner  in  Syra 
and  Lieder  in  Cairo,  or  they  were  transplanted  sooner  or 
later  to  other  missions.  About  the  year  1850  it  became 
apparent  to  the  Church  Missionary  Society  that  the  hopes 
set  on  the  Mediterranean  Mission  had  not  been  fulfilled, 
that  in  fact  it  was  almost  impossible  by  means  of  that  mission 
to  introduce  new  life  into  the  Oriental  Churches  or  to  bring 
the  Gospel  to  the  Muhammadans  of  Turkey.  The  mission 
was  therefore  discontinued  in  its  original  form. 

^.     The  Basle  Mission  in  Transcaucasia^  18'22-1835 
The  Basle  Mission,  founded  in  1816,  was,  in  the  first  years 
of  its  existence,  content  to  supply  men  for  other  societies, 
English  and  Dutch.     But,  in  1820,  feeling  at  length  a  measure 
of  strength,  it  began  to  contemplate  a  mission  of  its  own. 

Many  pious  Suabian  families  had  emigrated,  in  1819,  to 
Russian  Transcaucasia,  and  had  founded  German  settlements 
in  Tiflis  and  its  neighbourhood.  They  requested  the  Basle 
Committee  to  send  them  some  of  their  young  missionaries  to 
minister  to  them  spiritually.  The  active  mind  of  the  leading 
secretary  in  Basle,  Rev.  T.  Blumhardt,  recognized  in  this  ap- 
plication a  brilliant  prospect  for  an  extended  mission.  From 
these  German  colonies  as  centres  he  hoped  not  only  to  infuse 
new  life  into  the  moribund  Oriental  Churches,  but  also  to 
press  on  to  the  Muhammadans  living  in  adjacent  countries. 
His  expressive  face  used  to  light  up  as  he  expounded  his  idea 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  reach  Persia,  Russian  Trans- 
caucasia, nay,  all  the  countries  round  the  Mediterranean,  within 
a  few  day  s,  starting  from  any  harbour  of  the  Black  Sea.  Egypt, 
Abyssinia  and  the  ISTorth  Coast  of  Africa  were  not  too  far 
away  but  that  they  might  be  easily  and  safely  reached  and,  if 
necessary,  as  easily  escaped  from  (Eppler,  "Geschichte  der 
Easier  Mission,"  p.  28.    W.  Hoffmann, "  Elf  Jahre,"  pp.  30  ff.). 


98      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

The  energetic  support  of  the  Russian  government  was  also 
confidently  relied  on,  since  the  pious  Emperor  Alexander  I 
was  at  that  time  Czar.  It  was  under  his  influence  that  the 
Russian  Bible  Society  had  been  founded  in  1813.  This  Society 
joined  its  forces  with  those  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  to  reprint  and  distribute  the  then  rare  Ancient 
Armenian  Bible.  By  1815,  5,000  complete  Bibles  and  2,000 
New  Testaments  (followed,  in  1817,  by  2,000  more)  were  sent 
to  Russian  Armenia  and  were  speedily  disposed  of.  It  must 
be  confessed,  however,  that  they  were  bought  only  by  the 
educated  classes  and  higher  clergy,  who  alone  understood 
ancient  Armenian. 

The  Basle  Mission  was  begun  with  the  permission  of  the 
Russian  government,  though  under  certain  restrictions.  Pas- 
tors were  allowed  in  the  German  settlements,  but  non-Chris- 
tians should  be  baptized  only  on  condition  that  they  settled  in 
the  German  colonies.  There  were  four  tasks  that  the  Basle 
Committee  placed  before  the  first  missionaries  in  1821 :  (1)  to 
distribute  the  "Word  of  God  in  every  language  and  dialect  of 
those  peoples ;  (2)  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  chief  lan- 
guages commonly  spoken  by  them ;  (3)  to  found  a  college  for 
Persians  and  Tartars,  as  an  advanced  school  for  pupils  of  the 
elementary  national  schools  ;  (4)  to  set  up  a  printing-press  for 
the  translation  of  the  Bible  and  of  Protestant  literature. 

A  Scottish  missionary  society  had,  in  1802,  begun  to  work 
in  these  southeasterly  parts  of  Russia,  especially  from  two 
centres,  the  Tartar  village  of  Karass,  on  the  northern  slope  of 
the  Caucasus,  and  Astrachan,  the  capital,  lying  on  the  Caspian 
Sea.  But  as  the  results  proved  unsatisfactory  they  determined 
to  make  Astrachan  the  sole  centre,  and  to  direct  their  efforts 
mainly  to  the  distribution  of  the  Bible  and  of  Protestant  litera- 
ture. They  were  therefore  glad  that  the  Basle  Mission  was 
ready  to  take  up  their  work  at  Karass.  This  mission  thus 
secured  a  firm  footing  for  its  work. 

The  Suabian  colonists  in  Russian  Transcaucasia  welcomed 
the  Basle  Brethren  with  joy,  and  placed  themselves  under  their 
spiritual  care.    Rev.  A.  H.  Dittrich  drew  up  for  them  a  prac- 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour    99 

tical  form  of  church  organization  and  other  Brethren  became 
their  ministers.  But  soon  Sliusha,  a  town  in  the  mountain 
district  of  Karabagh,  situated  on  a  height  surrounded  by  deep 
valleys,  became  the  chief  centre  of  the  Basle  Mission.  Here 
they  began  an  Armenian  and  Russian  school,  and  set  up  their 
printing-press.  On  their  preaching  tours  they  passed 
through  the  districts  on  both  sides  of  the  Caucasus,  pene- 
trating also  far  into  Persia  and  Mesopotamia.  Rev.  Johann 
Jacob  Lang,  untiring  as  he  was  in  his  labours  among  the 
German  colonists,  still  found  time  to  go  from  one  Tartar  camp 
to  another,  bringing  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen.  Shusha  of- 
fered many  opportunities  for  work  among  the  Armenians,  and 
the  Basle  missionaries  believed  they  could  minister  to  them 
with  greater  freedom  and  success,  not  by  founding  a  separate 
Protestant  Church  but  by  arousing  the  old  Churches  them- 
selves to  new  spiritual  life.  Especially  in  Shemacha  and  Baku, 
two  towns  which  they  regarded  as  substations  of  Shusha  and 
often  visited,  they  gained  among  the  Armenians  faithful 
friends.  There  also  they  came  into  frequent,  and  often 
friendly,  touch  with  the  Muhammadans.  Felician  Zaremba, 
one  of  the  missionaries,  had  a  peculiar  gift  of  appealing  to  their 
hearts  in  a  simple  and  hearty  way.  Felician  Zaremba,^  a 
young  count  descended  from  an  old  Polish  noble  family,  a 
branch  of  which  had  gone  over  to  the  Protestant  Church  in 
1635,  had,  in  1817,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  under  the 
impulse  of  very  strong  religious  feelings,  turned  his  back  on 
brilliant  prospects  of  honour  and  riches  by  a  secret  flight 
across  the  boundary.  In  the  following  year  he  entered  the 
college  of  the  Basle  Mission.  The  committee  saw  in  him  a 
personality  specially  fitted  to  put  their  Caucasus  Mission  on  a 
firm  footing.  By  his  complete  command  of  the  Russian  lan- 
guage and  thorough  knowledge  of  Russian  state  affairs  he  was 
marked  as  the  man  to  conduct  the  many  complicated  negotia- 
tions with  the  Russian  authorities.  His  burning  zeal  to  lead 
souls  to  the  Saviour,  combined  with  the  ease  with  which  he 
approached  Armenians  and  Muhammadans,  made  him  an  ex- 
*  "  Ein  russischer  Edelmann  als  Misaionar,"  3d  ed.,  Baale,  1900.  '" 


100     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

cellent  missionary.  Though  he  may  not  have  been  the  most 
talented  among  the  German  missionaries  in  the  Caucasus,  he 
was  certainly  the  most  prominent  personality,  and,  during  the 
thirteen  years  of  the  existence  of  the  mission,  its  history  is  in 
the  main  the  history  of  his  life. 

Karl  Gottlieb  Pfander,  a  clever  linguist  with  a  thorough 
theological  education,  was  sent  out  in  1825,  and  proved  a 
master  in  the  difficult  task  of  theological  argument  with 
Muhammadans.  He  fearlessly  travelled  through  the  north- 
west of  Persia  and  the  countries  bordering  on  the  Euphrates, 
as  far  as  Bagdad,  winning  souls  for  Christ  by  his  clear  dialectic 
and  his  warm  heart.  His  chief  apologetic  work,  "The 
Balance  of  Truth  "  (Mizan  ul  Haqq),  is  founded  on  his  experi- 
ences as  an  itinerant  missionary  in  those  days.  It  is  one  of 
the  best  Protestant  polemical  works  directed  against  Islam,  it 
is  still  published  and  much  read  in  Arabic,  Turkish,  Persian, 
Hindustani  and  English,  and  is  almost  indispensable  to  every 
missionary  among  Muhammadans.^ 

Pfander  is  an  interesting  figure  among  the  Muhammadan 
missionaries  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Born  on  the  3d  of 
November,  1803,  in  Waiblingen,  the  son  of  pious  and  well-to- 
do  parents — his  father  was  a  baker — he  was  early  won  for 
mission  work,  and  entered  the  college  of  the  Basle  Mission  in 
1820.  In  1825  he  was  appointed  to  the  Basle  Mission  in  Trans- 
caucasia, with  special  instructions  to  devote  himself  to  the 
Muhammadans ;  and  that  constituted  his  life's  work  for  forty 
years,  until  his  death  on  the  1st  of  December,  1865.  He 
laboured  in  three  fields  consecutively  ;  during  the  first  twelve 
years,  1825-1837,  in  the  service  of  the  Basle  Mission  in  Trans- 
caucasia; then,  with  some  intervals,  for  fourteen  years  in 
Northern  India,  in  Agra  and  Peshawar  ;  and  finally,  for  seven 
years,  1858  to  1865,  in  Constantinople.  In  this  volume  we  come 
across  him  in  the  first  and  last  of  these  periods.  His  years  in 
India  were  no  doubt  the  zenith  of  his  life.  It  was  then  that 
he  displayed    the  greatest  power.     His  famous  controversy 

'"Chr.  Friedr.  Eppler,"  "Dr.  Karl  Gottlieb  Pfander,  ein  Zeuge  der  Wahr- 
keit."  Basle,  1888. 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour    lo  i 

with  his  well-informed  opponent  Rahmat  Allah,  in  Agra,  in 
the  Easter  week  of  1854,  was  a  notable  event  in  the  North 
India  Mission.  Two  of  the  witnesses  of  that  controversy,  the 
Muhammadans  Safdar  Ali  and  Imaduddin,  became  later  bold 
defenders  of  the  Christian  faith. 

Pfander  is  especially  celebrated  for  his  striking  apologetic 
book,  "  The  Balance  of  Truth  "  (Mizan  ul  Haqq,  English  Edi- 
tion  by  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Weakley,  London,  1867).  Starting 
from  the  deeply  rooted  and  general  desire  for  salvation  which 
can  be  satisfied  only  by  a  revealed  religion,  Pfander  goes  on 
to  show  that  for  Muhammadans  and  Christians  there  are  only 
three  books  of  revealed  religion,  the  Old  Testament,  the  New 
Testament  and  the  Koran.  Then  he  proves  in  three  chapters : 
(1)  that  the  Bible  supplies  a  fully  satisfying  revelation,  (2)  that 
this  revelation  ought  to  be  known  to  and  appropriated  by 
every  Moslem  and  (3)  that,  on  the  other  hand,  neither  was 
Muhammad  a  man  qualified  to  give  a  revelation,  nor  is  the 
Koran  in  itself  satisfactory.  Pfander  rightly  lays  chief  stress 
on  the  second  point,  the  systematic  exposition  of  salvation 
through  Christ.  He  does  this  very  positively,  but  at  the  same 
time  in  a  manner  that  appeals  to  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
Muhammadans.  In  the  first  part  he  disposes  of  the  foolish 
prejudices  of  Moslems  against  the  Bible,  above  all  of  the  utter 
unreasonableness  of  the  talk  about  the  corruption  of  the  text 
of  the  Bible,  a  means  of  attack  which,  devised  by  Muhammad 
himself,  has  been  reiterated  again  and  again  by  Muhammadan 
controversialists  to  cover  the  fact  that  the  Bible  opposes  the 
prophetic  claims  of  Muhammad.  Yery  wisely  he  postpones 
his  severe  polemic  against  Muhammad  and  the  Koran  to  the 
third  chapter  so  that  it  follows  his  exposition  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  Salvation.  He  does  not  mince  his  words,  but 
gives  a  very  clear  and  strong  statement  of  the  shortcomings  of 
the  Prophet. 

The  varied  work  of  the  Basle  Brethren  was  not  without  re- 
sults in  many  ways.  The  Muhammadans  gained  were  few, 
but  they  were  men  of  worth.  One  of  them  was  Mirza  Faruch, 
a  child  of  Christian  parents,  who  had  been  kidnapped  by  the 


102     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  Esat 

Persians  and  had  been  for  seventeen  years  brought  up  as  a 
Moslem,  He  became  the  faithful  companion  of  the  mission- 
aries on  their  preaching  tours.  Another  convert  was  Alex- 
ander Kasim  Beg,  a  learned  professor  in  Kasan.  Among  the 
Armenians,  also,  the  mission  had  faithful  friends,  such  as  the 
two  deacons  Moses  and  Parsegh  in  Shusha,  the  teacher  Arakel  in 
Sheraacha,  the  merchant  Hakob,  father  of  Hakob  Abuhayatian, 
the  martyr  of  Urfa  in  1895,  and  others.  But  a  destructive 
blight  was  to  fall  upon  this  promising  work.  The  higher 
clergy  in  the  patriarchate  of  Echmiadzin  determined  to  oppose 
this  active  Protestant  movement.  They  refused  to  give  their 
sanction  to  the  translation  of  the  Bible  in  the  modern  Ar- 
menian tongue,  a  translation  which  Dittrich  had  prepared  with 
such  pains.  They  sent  a  memorial  to  the  Kussian  Court,  com- 
plaining of  the  unwarrantable  interference  of  the  Basle  mis- 
sionaries in  the  concerns  of  the  Armenian  Church.  The  gov- 
ernor-general, von  Rosen,  who  was  an  enemy  of  Protestant 
missions,  kindled  the  flame  of  hostility  against  the  Basle 
Brethren,  by  describing  them  as  secret  allies  of  the  English 
and  enemies  to  Russian  influence.  Nicholas  I  therefore  issued 
a  ukase  on  the  5th  of  July  (23d  of  August),  1835,  which  put 
a  sudden  end  to  the  Basle  Mission.  The  ukase  forbade  any  kind 
of  work  within  the  Armenian  Church,  or  among  Muhara- 
madans.  Within  the  Russian  dominions,  the  Russian  State 
Church  alone  was  to  be  authorized  to  work  among  other 
Christian  Churches  and  among  Muhammadans. 

For  a  time  the  hope  was  entertained  in  Basle  that  they 
might  be  able  to  continue  the  Caucasus  Mission  in  spite  of  this 
crushing  blow.  Nothing  more  might  be  necessary  than  to 
transfer  the  centre  of  their  activity  to  the  Turkish  territory 
lying  close  at  hand,  in  order  to  carry  on  the  work  among  the 
Armenians  undisturbed.  But  would  not  the  Armenian  clergy 
there  be  just  as  hostile  to  their  work  as  on  Russian  territory? 
And  would  they  not  by  such  a  move  be  encroaching  on  the 
work  of  the  American  Board  in  those  parts  ?  In  the  opinion 
of  Gottlieb  Pfander,  Persia  ought  to  be  made  the  centre  of 
the  mission's  activity.     It  was,  indeed,  clear  that  the  time  had 


The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Endeavour    103 

not  yet  arrived  for  a  direct  and  open  preaching  of  the  Gospel 
there,  yet  he  hoped  to  be  able  to  found  schools  for  secular  ed- 
ucation. The  Basle  Committee,  however,  would  not  agree  to 
undertake  such  purely  preparatory  work. 

So  the  Caucasus  Mission  was  dissolved.  Those  of  the  breth- 
ren who  did  not  remain  as  pastors  of  the  German  settlements 
entered  the  service  of  English  societies,  chiefly  the  Church 
Missionary  Society,  in  Asia  Minor  or  India. 

There  came  an  unexpected  after-effect  of  the  Basle  Mission 
in  the  Caucasus.  In  Shemacha,  in  1842,  the  Armenians  who 
had  been  awakened  under  the  ministry  of  the  Basle  Brethren 
formed,  under  the  leadership  of  the  teacher  Arakel  and  an 
Armenian  named  Sarki  Hambarzumoff,  a  small  Protestant 
community  within  the  Armenian  Church.  Being  excommuni- 
cated in  1861  with  fearful  anathemas,  they  obtained  permis- 
sion in  1866,  after  suffering  much  persecution,  to  attach  them- 
selves to  the  recognized  Protestant-Lutheran  Church  of  Rus- 
sia. In  union  with  that  Church  they  exist  to  this  day,  exer- 
cising no  influence  on  the  Armenian  Church  (Eppler,  "  Ge- 
schichte  der  Griindung  der  armenisch-evangelischen  Gemeinde 
in  Schamachi,"  Basle,  1873). 


Ill 

PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  TURKEY  AND  ARMENIA 

WE  divide  European  Turkey  into  four  parts :  Albania, 
Macedonia,  Thrace,  and  Bulgaria,  though  the  Prin- 
cipality of  Bulgaria  is  in  process  of  becoming  inde- 
pendent. The  population  of  Albania  is  mainly  Albanian, 
though  there  is  an  intermingling  of  Servians  and  Turks  in  the 
northeast,  and  of  Greeks  in  Epirus  to  the  south.  Of  the  mil- 
lion of  inhabitants,  the  Roman  Church  claims  131,400,  at  least 
333,000  belong  to  the  Orthodox  Church,  and  about  100,00  are 
Bulgarians ;  the  rest  of  the  population  is  Muhammadan,  save 
for  the  modest  number  claimed  by  the  Protestant  Mission. 
Macedonia,  including  the  vilayets  of  Salonioa,  Monastir  and 
Kossovo,  is  inhabited  mainly  by  Greeks  in  the  south  and  along 
the  coast,  and  by  Bulgarians  in  the  interior,  the  number  of 
the  population  being  about  2,Y50,000.  Salonica,  the  chief 
town,  is  a  busy  centre  of  Protestant  missions,  which  have  also 
secured  a  footing  in  the  vilayet  of  Monastir-Bitolia.  Thrace, 
in  which  lies  the  capital,  and  which  consists  of  the  vilayets  of 
Constantinople  and  Adrianople,  has  a  population  of  2,000,000, 
Constantinople  alone  claiming  more  than  half  a  million.  In 
Thrace  a  majority  are  Turks.  The  Christians  belong  mainly 
to  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church. 

In  Bulgaria  there  are  about  3,732,200  inhabitants,  of  whom 
643,258  are  Muhammadans.  In  the  statistical  tables  of  1893, 
2,606,786  are  given  as  Greek  or  Bulgarian  Catholics,  22,617 
as  Roman  Catholics,  2,384  as  Protestants  and  6,643  as 
Armenian  Christians.  This  makes  a  total  of  about  2,640,000 
Christians.  It  is  computed  that  the  population  of  European 
Turkey,  without  Bulgaria,  numbers  rather  less  than  5,891,000, 
of  whom  3,000,000  are  Muhammadans  and  2,660,000  Christians. 

104 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        105 

Of  the  latter,  2,250,000  are  Greek  Orthodox  and   320,000 
Eoman  Catholics. 

We  divide  Turkey  in  Asia  into  the  five  large  groups  of  Asia 
Minor,  Armenia  with  Kurdistan,  Syria,  Mesopotamia  and 
Arabia.* 

The  following  is  a  statistical  table  of  the  population : 

Fopulaiion. 

Asia  Minor 9,500,000 

Armenia    and    Kurdistan     (vilayets     Mamuret    el    Aziz, 

Erzerum,  Van,  Bitlis  and  Diarbekr) 2,500,000 

Syria  (vilayets  Beirut  and  Syria,   mutessarifliks,    Lebanon 

and  Jerusalem  and  the  Janak  Haleb) 2,500,000 

Mesopotamia  (vilayets  Mosul,  Bagdad  and  Basra  and  the 

districts  of  Urfa  and  Sor) 1,200,000 

Arabia  (vilayets  Hijas,   Asir,  Hodeida,  Sana  and  Taisand 

the  Nejd) 1,200,000 

Total  population  of  Turkey  in  Asia 16,900,000 

We  have  to  deal  at  present  only  with  the  first  two  divisions, 
— Asia  Minor,  and  Armenia  with  Kurdistan.  We  take  them 
up  together,  since  they  are  indissolubly  connected  in  their 
mission  history.  Muhammadans  preponderate  in  both  prov- 
inces. Orthodox  Greeks  inhabit  the  western  and  northern 
coasts  of  Asia  Minor,  where  there  are  more  than  a  million  of 
them.  In  the  towns  of  these  districts  there  are  scattered  col- 
onies of  Armenians,  especially  numerous  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Constantinople,  one  of  the  most  noted  churches  to  which 
Armenians  make  pilgrimage,  as  well  as  the  best  Armenian 
training-school,  being  situated  in  Armash  near  Nicomedia. 
In  the  vilayets  of  Armenia  and  Kurdistan  the  Armenians 
dwell  in  fairly  compact  masses.  According  to  a  very  super- 
ficial estimate  there  are  altogether  10,000,000  Muhammadans 
and  2,500,000  Christians  in  these  lands. 

'  Of  the  eighteen  vilayets  and  two  mutessarifliks  which  constitute  Asia  Minor, 
we  find  in  the  Chrisil.  Orient  a  passably  correct  statistical  statement,  following 
Cuinet, ' '  La  Turquie  d'  Asie, ' '  Paris,  1892-1894.  According  to  it  the  population 
of  Asia  Minor  is  14,857,118,  of  whom  11,801,485  are  Muhammadans  and  2,760,- 
864  Christians;  of  the  latter  1,475,011  are  Armenians.  The  Armenians  form, 
therefore,  the  greater  part  of  the  Christian  population  of  Asia  Minor. 


io6     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

1.     The  Mission  of  the  American  Board  Until  the  Ru/pture 
with  the  Ancient  Church,  1830-184-6 

As  in  so  many  other  fields  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  was  the  first  organization  to  begin  Protestant  mission- 
ary work  in  Turkey.  Just  as,  with  the  cooperation  of  the 
Russian  Bible  Society,  it  had  laboured  in  Russian  Armenia,  so 
here  in  Turkish  Armenia  it  distributed  Bibles  and  portions  of 
the  Bible  in  Ancient  Armenian  at  very  reduced  prices,  drawing 
part  of  its  supply  from  St.  Petersburg,  and  making  use  also  of 
the  version  prepared  by  the  Roman  Mechitarists  in  San  Lazaro 
near  Venice.  Soon  perceiving,  however,  that  these  versions 
were  not  easily  understood  by  the  people,  the  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society,  in  conjunction  with  the  Russian  Bible 
Society,  prepared  in  1822  a  new  Armenian-Turkish  translation 
of  the  New  Testament  and  in  1823  another  in  the  vulgar 
Armenian  tongue  (Ashharapar).  As  the  Armenian  Church 
authorities  did  not  wish  a  Bible  to  be  read  by  the  common 
people,  they  refused  to  give  their  sanction  to  these  versions, 
and  the  British  colporteurs  had  to  dispose  of  their  costly 
wares  as  well  as  they  could  in  face  of  opposition  from  the 
Armenian  clergy. 

In  1828  the  mission  of  the  American  Board  ^  in  Syria, 
founded  by  the  Congregational  Church  of  the  United  States, 
was  temporarily  interrupted  by  the  Greek  War  of  Independ- 
ence, and  the  missionaries  had  to  retire  to  Malta  (cf.  Chap. 
VI,  A,  1).  Two  of  them,  Dr.  Eli  Smith  and  Dr.  O.  Dwight, 
were  commissioned  by  their  committee  to  undertake  a  journey 
of  exploration  and  research  throughout  Asia  Minor,  Armenia 
and  l^orth western  Persia.  After  having  been  nearly  six- 
teen months  on  the  way,  they  gave  the  report  of  their  expe- 
riences in  an  important  book  entitled  :  "Christian  Researches 
in  Armenia."    This  book,  which  went  through  several  editions, 

^  Cf.  Rufus  Anderson,  "History  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  Oriental  Churches,"  2 
Vols.  For  the  period  1831-1846  Pfeifer,  "Die  Armenierin  der  Tiirkei," Berlin, 
1863,  copied  in  Christl.  Orient,  1897,  pp.  27,  78, 120.  "Forty  years  in  the  Turkish 
Empire.  Memoirs  of  Kev.  Wm.  Goodell,  D.  D.,"  by  Ed.  G.  Prime,  D.  D.,  8th 
ed.,  Boston,  1891. 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        107 

drew  the  attention  of  American  friends  of  mission  work  to  the 
peoples  of  the  Near  East,  and  the  American  Board  resolved 
to  begin  work  at  once  among  the  Armenians. 

A  way  was  opened  for  them  in  a  surprising  manner  in  the 
large  and  influential  Armenian  colony  in  Constantinople, 
Certain  merchants  and  bankers  of  high  social  position,  know- 
ing that  knowledge  is  power,  had  come  to  the  conviction  that 
the  superiority  of  European  nations  was  based,  to  a  great  ex- 
tent, on  their  advanced  culture.  They  were  therefore  look- 
ing around  for  men  to  bring  them  that  Western  culture,  and 
became  convinced  that  good  schools  were  the  best  channel  for 
this  life-giving  stream.  At  the  head  of  this  enlightened  party 
was  the  educator,  Peshtimaljan,  who  has  been  called  the 
Erasmus  of  Armenia.  He  was  a  careful  and  critical  student 
of  the  Armenian  language  and  literature,  and  was  well  versed 
in  the  history  and  theology  of  the  Oriental  and  Roman 
Churches.  He  quoted  the  Bible  with  astonishing  ease  and 
exactitude,  and  relied  on  it  as  on  the  supreme  guide  of  faith. 
Although  timid  by  nature,  he  led  his  students  slowly  but 
surely  into  new  paths  of  study,  convincing  them  that  their 
Church  was  not  only  not  infallible,  but  that  it  had  actually 
gone  astray  on  many  points  of  doctrine.  He  was  the  best 
possible  precursor  of  the  Protestant  missionaries ;  from  his 
pupils  they  obtained  their  first  assistants.  Up  to  his  death  in 
183Y  he  remained  a  staunch  friend  of  Protestantism,  although 
he  never  had  the  courage  openly  to  join  the  Protestant  com- 
munity. 

It  was  on  the  9th  of  June,  1831,  that  the  first  missionary  of 
the  American  Board,  Rev.  William  Goodell,  arrived  in  Con- 
stantinople, to  be  followed  a  year  later  by  the  Rev.  Harrison 
Gray  Otis  Dwight,  the  pioneer,  and  by  the  Rev.  William 
Gottlieb  Schauffler,  the  linguist.  It  was  fortunate  for  the  new 
mission  that  it  could  retain  the  services  of  these  excellent  men 
for  thirty  years  and  more.  Dr.  Goodell  retired  in  1865  in  his 
seventy-third  year,  and  died  on  February  18,  186Y,  in  Phila- 
delphia. Dr.  Schauffler  lived  on  to  1883,  when,  at  the  age  of 
eighty-four,  he  died  in  New  York,  the  veteran  of  the  mission. 


io8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

These  three  men  determined  the  character  of  the  Board's 
work  during  the  first  three  decades  of  its  existence. 

Dr.  H.  G.  O.  D  wight  worked  well-nigh  uninterruptedly  in 
Constantinople.  His  chief  power  lay  in  his  untiring  proclama- 
tion of  the  Gospel  in  Constantinople  and  its  neighbourhood. 
In  addition  to  learned  treatises  and  magazine  articles,  he  wrote 
in  1850  his  "  Christianity  Revived  in  the  East."  (The  second 
edition  in  1854  had  the  title  "  Christianity  in  Turkey.")  He 
met  with  his  death  in  an  unfortunate  railway  accident,  whilst 
at  home  on  furlough,  on  the  25th  of  January,  1862. 

Two  methods  recommended  themselves  as  the  most  effectual 
in  gaining  entrance  and  influence,  namely  literary  and  educa- 
tional work.  The  former  has  been  from  the  beginning  the 
most  prominent  part  of  American  activity,  and  their  work  in 
this  sphere  has  been  excellent.  It  may  be  said  in  general  that 
the  American  missionaries  have  created  a  literature  in  every 
language  in  the  Near  East  which  fell  within  the  field  of  their 
labours.  The  whole  of  the  Bible  was  translated  into  modern 
Armenian,  Armeno-Turkish  and  Osmanli-Turkish,  the  classical 
language  of  the  Turks  (cf.  Chap.  YII,  2,  a,  h),  and  is  printed 
in  various  editions,  as  also  in  portions.  Further  they  published 
the  New  Testament  and  the  Psalms  in  ancient  Armenian  and 
in  Kurdish.  To  supplement  this  direct  Bible  work,  and  as 
helps  to  a  better  understanding  of  the  Bible,  handbooks,  con- 
cordances, commentaries  and  other  books  of  the  kind  were 
written  and  published,  especially  in  modern  Armenian  and 
Armeno-Turkish.  Books  of  devotion  were  also  compiled  in 
both  languages.  Then  there  were  handbooks  on  all  the  sub- 
jects taught  both  in  the  lower  schools  and  in  colleges.  Even 
a  weekly  paper,  the  Avedaper  (messenger),  of  a  combined  re- 
ligious and  secular  character,  received  constant  care  and 
attention.  It  has  appeared  since  1885,  partly  in  modern 
Armenian,  partly  in  Armeno-Turkish,  and  has  about  one 
thousand  subscribers.  Nearly  all  of  the  American  mission- 
aries took  part  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  in  this  literary 
work ;  but  the  bulk  of  it  lay  on  the  shoulders  of  Dr.  Goodell, 
who   distinguished  himself  by  the  translation  of  the  Bible 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       109 

into  Armeno-Turkish,   and,   later,   on  those  of  the  linguist, 
Dr.  Elias  Riggs. 

Elias  Biggs  was  a  reticent,  retiring  student,  whose  com- 
panions were  his  books,  and  whose  chief  delight  was  the  ac- 
quiring of  ancient  and  modern  languages.  He  was  a  com- 
plete master  of  Greek,  Armenian  and  Bulgarian ;  he  studied 
the  dead  languages  of  the  Near  East,  Hebrew  and  Chaldaic, 
Syriac  and  Koptic ;  he  understood  most  of  the  living  languages 
of  Europe  and  "Western  Asia,  at  least  well  enough  to  be  able 
to  read  their  literature  without  any  trouble.  He  had  a  gift  for 
exact  philological  investigation,  and  was  deeply  interested  in 
all  questions  connected  with  the  study  of  languages.  "With  all 
this  scientific  endowment,  he  was  a  man  possessed  of  a  steady 
determination  to  devote  these  talents  to  the  service  of  the 
Christian  Churches  of  the  Orient,  by  providing  them  with 
good  Protestant  literature  in  languages  understood  by  the 
common  people.  His  work  was  devoted  to  the  three  great 
Oriental  Churches,  the  Greek,  the  Bulgarian  and  the  Armenian. 
He  wrote  many  of  the  tracts  and  school-books  that  were  neces- 
sary to  the  mission  in  their  church  and  educational  work.  Ho 
assisted  in  the  production  of  the  magazines  which  the  mission- 
aries published,  though  he  did  not  edit  them  himself.  He 
translated  and  composed  many  hymns  for  the  church  services. 
Above  all  else,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  translation  of  the 
Bible  with  all  his  mind  and  heart.  This  work  of  his  predilec- 
tion was  characterized  by  painful  exactitude,  patient  research, 
sincere  fidelity  and  a  wonderfully  consistent  style.  With 
equal  intentness  he  strove  to  gain  for  himself  a  clear  under- 
standing of  a  passage  and  then  to  present  it  in  words  and 
phrases  that  would  be  at  once  understood  by  the  simplest 
mind.  His  two  complete  versions,  in  Armenian  and  Bul- 
garian, are  regarded  by  experts  as  masterpieces  of  translation. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  committee  appointed  to  revise  the 
Turkish  version,  it  being  his  special  task  to  give  everywhere 
a  clear  exposition  of  the  sense  of  the  original  Hebrew  or 
Greek  text  of  the  Bible,  which  his  colleagues  undertook  to 
express  in  the  Turkish  language. 


no     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Dr.  Riggs'  life  was  extraordinarily  uneventful.  Having 
been  sent  to  the  East  as  early  as  1830,  he  assisted  for  some 
years  in  the  mission  schools  in  Argos  (Greece),  in  Bebek,  in 
Haskeui  near  Constantinople,  and  in  Smyrna.  After  that  he 
went  to  Constantinople,  where  he  spent  the  latter  half  of  his 
life,  nearly  fifty  years,  in  quiet  study.  Highly  esteemed  by 
friends  and  opponents,  greatly  admired  for  his  learning,  and 
yet  always  of  a  retiring  disposition,  he  spent  these  years  in 
strenuous  work,  until  at  the  age  of  ninety  he  entered  into 
his  rest  on  the  ITth  of  January,  1901. 

Though  only  a  small  minority  of  the  Armenians  could  read, 
they  were  from  of  old  a  civilized  nation  with  a  great  respect 
for  books,  and  with  a  deep-rooted  faith  in  the  Bible  as  the 
Word  of  God  and  as  the  supreme  authority  for  faith  and  con- 
duct. So  the  open  Bible  was  the  missionaries'  most  powerful 
ally.  An  appeal  to  it  was  always  impressive  and  through 
such  oft-reiterated  appeals  they  justified  their  work  in  the 
minds  of  the  people.  The  Board's  work  among  the  Armenians 
consisted  essentially  in  carrying  out  a  favourite  watchword  of 
American  friends  of  the  mission  :  "  The  reintroduction  of  the 
Bible  into  Bible  lands."  Even  after  the  pioneers  of  this  great 
literary  work  had  died,  one  after  another  other  able  men  fol- 
lowed in  their  footsteps.  Of  these  we  mention  only  Dr.  Ed- 
ward Riggs,  the  son  of  Elias  Riggs,  Henry  Otis  D wight,  son 
of  H.  G.  Otis  D wight.  Dr.  Henry  S.  Barnum  (since  1867)  and 
Dr.  George  F.  Herrick. 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  the  Board  to  carry  out 
its  comprehensive  literary  scheme,  had  not  the  British  and 
American  Bible  Societies,  as  well  as  various  religious  tract 
societies  rendered  abundant  help.  The  Bible  House  in  Con- 
stantinople was  the  arsenal  which  supplied  all  the  mission 
stations  with  the  two-edged  sword  of  God's  Word  (cf.  Chap. 
VII,  2,  g). 

The  second  of  the  two  methods  which  the  American  Board 
found  most  useful  was  educational  worlc.  Having  made  pre- 
vious attempts  in  this  direction  in  Greece,  the  American  mis- 
sionaries opened  a  grammar  school  in  Constantinople  in  1834, 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       1 1 1 

After  various  changes,  this  was  transformed  in  1848  into  a 
"  Seminary  "  in  Bebek,  a  suburb  of  Constantinople,  with  Dr. 
Cyrus  Hamlin  as  its  active  and  capable  head.  The  intention 
was  to  attract  the  flower  of  the  Armenian  youth  by  offering 
a  thorough  Western  education.  Other  less  important  schools 
had  the  same  aim  in  view.  It  soon  became  evident,  however, 
that  this  end  could  not  be  so  easily  accomplished  as  had  been 
expected.  There  were  other  opportunities  for  advanced  edu- 
cation in  Constantinople  and  its  neighbourhood,  the  district  to 
which  the  mission  was  at  first  confined.  For  the  leading  Ar- 
menian bankers,  not  liking  to  see  the  Americans  monopolize 
higher  education,  set  up  rival  schools.  Besides,  the  mission 
had  learned  that,  in  order  to  gain  influence  in  the  Armenian 
Church,  it  was  more  necessary  to  spread  the  knowledge  of  the 
Gospel  among  its  clergy,  and  to  get  as  many  of  the  clergy  as 
possible  under  their  influence  for  a  time.  So  the  seminary  in 
Bebek  was  converted  into  a  preparatory  theological  institu- 
tion. 

It  was  not  the  original  plan  of  the  Americans  to  found  sep- 
arate Protestant  churches.  They  rejoiced  not  to  be  obliged 
to  take  up  at  once  such  an  attitude  towards  the  ancient 
Church  as  had  been  forced  on  their  brethren  in  Syria  by  the 
deliberate  hostility  of  the  Maronites  in  the  Lebanon.  They 
hoped  gradually  to  leaven  the  Armenians  and  their  Church 
with  Gospel  teaching  and  a  vigorous  Christian  life,  being 
ready,  meanwhile,  to  bear  patiently  the  abuses  and  antiquated 
forms  of  that  Church,  until  in  course  of  time  their  teaching 
should  promote  a  reform  of  the  whole  church  life  from  within. 
But  they  were  disappointed.  The  leaders  of  the  Armenians, 
and  the  higher  clergy  in  particular,  soon  began  to  look  askance 
at  the  rapid  progress  of  the  Protestant  mission,  and  to  combat 
it  with  imprisonment,  banishment,  and  a  policy  of  petty  vex- 
ation. The  Patriarch  Stephan  III  (1831-1839,  and  1840-1841) 
was  dethroned  because  he  was  too  indulgent,  too  favourable 
towards  the  Protestants.  His  successor,  the  Patriarch  Matteos 
(1844-1848),  made  it  his  chief  aim  to  extirpate  the  Protestant 


1 12     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

movement.  Nor  is  he  altogether  to  be  blamed.  The  Ameri- 
can Mission  was  more  of  a  threat  than  perhaps  its  missionaries 
realized  to  the  unity  of  an  ancient  Church,  with  whose  eccle- 
siastical organization  and  with  whose  historic  forms  the  demo- 
cratic spirit  of  American  Congregationalism  was,  at  best,  but 
little  in  accord.  And  with  this  church  unity,  which  the  Amer- 
ican Mission  thus  threatened,  was  wrapped  up  the  national 
ideal. 

Robbed  of  political  independence,  scattered  over  wide  and 
diverse  areas,  having  not  even  a  common  language,  the  Ar- 
menians had  but  one  bond  of  union  left  them,  their  Church. 
To  touch  this,  to  threaten  its  existence,  was  regarded  as  a 
crime  against  their  nation.  The  most  powerful  motive  of 
Armenian  opposition  to  the  American  Mission  was  the  fear 
that  its  success  would  break  or  at  least  loosen  the  unity  of  the 
national  Church. 

The  Patriarch  Matteos  had  effectual  means  at  his  disposal 
to  annihilate  the  flourishing  Protestant  w'ork.  The  sharpest 
weapon  at  his  command  was  the  power  of  excommunication, 
and  this  he  wielded  in  the  freest  and  most  effective  manner. 
Protestants,  or  those  suspected  of  Protestant  tendencies,  even 
the  pupils  of  the  mission  schools,  were  excommunicated,  some- 
times as  individuals,  sometimes  by  companies  (1844-1846). 
The  churches  in  the  metropolis,  and  in  all  the  districts  in 
which  the  Protestants  had  exercised  any  influence,  resounded 
with  the  anathemas  of  excommunication.  Parents  were  com- 
manded to  disown  their  children,  employers  to  dismiss  Prot- 
estant labourers.  Protestants  were  to  be  forced  to  pay  their 
debts  at  once,  without  any  mercy  ;  no  baker  nor  butcher  was 
to  sell  them  anything ;  they  were  to  be  shunned  like  the  plague. 
The  peculiar  double  function  of  the  Armenian  Patriarch,  who 
is  not  only  the  ecclesiastical  but  also  the  political  and  social 
head  of  his  community,  enabled  him  to  cause  the  curses  of  his 
excommunications  to  fall  with  irresistible  force  on  all  who  had 
Protestant  leanings.  Many  families,  especially  in  the  capital, 
were  bereft  of  home  and  sustenance.  The  missionaries  ap- 
pealed to  the  Protestants  of  Europe  and  America  for  help  in 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       113 

supplying  their  persecuted  converts  with  food  and  shelter,  and 
in  giving  them  a  new  start  in  life. 

2.  From  the  Organization  of  the  Protestant  Church  in  1850 
Until  the  Armenian  Massacres  in  1895 

A  critical  turning-point  had  been  reached.  What  was  to 
be  done  ?  The  Protestant  Mission  and  its  adherents  had  been 
solemnly  and  officially  thrust  out  of  the  Armenian  Church. 
If  the  Americans  were  not  to  drop  their  work  altogether,  they 
could  hardly  avoid  organizing  a  separate  Church.  This  would 
have  a  far-reaching  influence  on  civic  life.  Ecclesiastical  com- 
munities are  in  Turkey  at  the  same  time  civic  corporations. 
They  have  their  own  taxation  registers,  they  record  their 
own  births,  deaths  and  marriages  in  accordance  with  the 
Turkish  official  forms.  They  settle  among  themselves  many 
civil  cases,  especially  heritage  quarrels.  The  religious  com- 
munity must  give  bond  for  any  of  their  number  who  wish  to 
open  a  shop  or  to  start  a  trade.  If  the  Americans  wished  to 
build  up  a  Protestant  community,  they  would  have  to  organ- 
ize their  adherents  as  a  civic  corporation.  Their  converts 
must  leave  the  communion,  inherited  from  the  fathers  and 
sanctified  by  age,  to  form  themselves  into  a  new  communion 
based  on  the  Protestant  faith. 

Fortunately  for  the  Protestant  cause,  the  English  ambas- 
sador at  that  time,  Lord  Stratford  Canning  de  Redcliff,  under- 
stood and  warmly  interested  himself  in  what  was  going  on. 
After  consulting  with  his  government  and  the  missionaries,  he 
first  made  a  preliminary  arrangement,  which  was  followed  in 
1850  by  the  proclamation  of  an  imperial  firman  granting  a 
legal  status  to  the  "  Protestants  "  (abbreviated  by  the  Turks 
into  "  Prote  "),  of  whom  there  were  1,007,  as  a  new  ecclesi- 
astical and  civic  corporation.  Since  they  had  no  bishop,  who, 
like  the  patriarchs,  might  negotiate  directly  with  the  Porte, 
the  civic  functions  of  such  an  ecclesiastical  head  were  trans- 
ferred to  an  "Agent  of  the  Protestants,"  to  be  chosen  by 
themselves.  But  be  it  noticed,  all  Protestants  in  the  whole 
of  Turkey  were  by  this  firman  allowed  to  form  only  one  civic 


114     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

and  ecclesiastical  community,  whatever  their  nationalities 
might  be ;  they  ceased  to  be  Armenians  or  Greeks,  Arabians 
or  Syrians,  and  all  came  under  the  category  of  "  Protestants." 
However  great  the  gain  was,  and  however  thankfully  the 
persecuted  Armenians  and  their  missionaries  were  for  the 
firman,  it  is  evident  that  it  had  many  disappointments  in 
store  for  the  Protestant  cause.  Under  such  a  constitution  it 
was  very  diflB.cult  for  Protestantism  really  to  become  popular 
in  the  Eastern  Churches  ;  it  looked  like  a  wedge  threatening 
to  split  up  their  nationalities.  In  the  name  of  the  patriotism 
for  which  both  Armenians  and  Greeks  are  famous,  the  Eastern 
Churches  raised  repeated  protests  against  such  national  decom- 
position, and  more  than  once  at  critical  moments  the  cry  was 
heard,  "  We  hope  to  become  twice  as  much  evangelical  as  you 
are,  but  we  will  never  become  Protestants." 

Yet  these  evils  did  not  immediately  become  apparent ;  on 
the  contrary,  the  firman  of  1850  was  followed  by  a  great  ad- 
vance on  the  part  of  the  mission.  A  great  task  was  placed 
before  it,  the  task  of  building  up  a  separate  Protestant  Church. 
The  first  step  they  took  was  to  extend  their  sphere  of  activity 
considerably.  Even  prior  to  the  rupture  they  had  gained 
some  footing  in  Asia  Minor.  Since  1820  Smyrna  had  been 
occupied,  though  not  continually,  the  first  station  of  the  Amer- 
ican Board  in  the  Levant.  When  the  station  in  Malta  was 
given  up  in  1833  (cf.  Chap.  IV,  a,  1),  the  printing-press  and 
its  accessories,  with  the  exception  of  what  was  required  for 
Arabic  work  in  Beirut,  was  taken  to  Smyrna,  which  was  per- 
manently occupied  by  the  American  missionaries  in  1834. 
Owing  to  the  close  connection  of  Constantinople  with  Bithynia 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Sea  of  Marmora, 
some  sparks  of  evangelical  truth  had  been  carried  into  the 
latter  territory  and  had  burst  into  flame,  particularly  in  Brusa, 
Nicomedia  and  Adabazar,  where  small  Protestant  congrega- 
tions had  been  formed  under  the  leadership  of  converted 
priests.  Brusa  had  been  occupied  as  a  station  in  1834.  When, 
in  the  same  year,  the  Board's  Persian  Mission  among  the 
Nestorians  was  begun  in  Urmia,  Trehizond  became  the  Black 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       115 

Sea  harbour  from  which  the  overland  route  to  Persia  started. 
It  therefore  was  an  indispensable  place  for  a  depot  on  the 
road  to  the  distant  inland  mission  field,  and  work  was  begun 
there  in  1840.  This  single  link  between  Constantinople  and 
the  mission  field  in  Persia  proved  insufficient,  in  view  of 
the  great  distance,  the  bad  roads,  the  lack  of  facilities  for 
travelling,  and  the  danger  from  bands  of  Kurdish  robbers. 
So  in  1840  a  second  station  was  established  in  Erzerum^ 
half-way  from  Trebizond  to  Lake  Urmia.  This  ancient 
and  important  town  recommended  itself  the  more,  be- 
cause it  was  considered  to  be  the  capital  of  Turkish  Ar- 
menia and  lay  in  the  midst  of  a  district  very  thickly  popu- 
lated by  Armenians. 

At  the  time  of  the  rupture  more  new  stations  were  founded, 
either  as  a  favourable  opportunity  offered  itself,  or  according 
to  a  well-considered  plan,  whereby  the  work  was  to  be  ex- 
tended so  as  to  reach  all  towns  and  districts  with  a  large 
Armenian  population.  The  first  station,  Aintab,  lay  far  in- 
land from  the  Bay  of  Iscanderun,  on  the  southern  slope  of  the 
wild  Taurus  range.  Bedros,  an  Armenian  priest  in  Constan- 
tinople, had  been  banished  to  a  monastery  in  Jerusalem  on 
account  of  his  Protestant  leanings.  On  the  way  thither  he 
escaped  to  Aintab,  where  his  preaching  found  such  unexpected 
and  general  acceptance  that  the  missionaries,  after  a  short 
visit  of  inspection,  established  there  a  station  in  1846.  In  a 
short  time  Aintab  became  one  of  the  most  powerful  centres 
of  the  entire  work.  From  Aintab  the  work  was  extended 
along  the  southern  slope  of  the  Taurus  eastwards  and  west- 
wards. Marash,  the  most  important  of  the  stations  founded 
from  Aintab  as  a  centre,  soon  became  a  flourishing  sister- 
station.  Other  towns  were  only  temporarily  occupied  by 
American  missionaries.  Such  towns  were  Urfa,  the  ancient 
Edessa,  the  renowned  town  of  Abraham,  Aleppo,  the  thriving 
centre  of  Northern  Syria,  Adana,  the  capital  of  the  fertile 
Cilician  plain,  and  the  proud,  grim  mountain  fastnesses  of 
Hadjin  and  Zeitun.  In  1856  this  branch  of  the  mission  to  the 
south  of  the  Taurus  was  organized  as  a  separate  mission, 


1 16     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

called  at  first  the  "  Southern  Mission,"  and  later,  the  "  Mission 
of  Central  Turkey." 

Another  important  starting-point  of  extensive  development 
was  in  the  wild  highlands  of  Southwestern  Armenia  and 
Kurdistan,  with  their  deep  fertile  valleys.  The  attention  of 
the  missionaries  was  directed  to  this  field  of  work  on  their 
long  journeys  from  Trebizond  across  the  highlands  of  Asia 
Minor  to  Mesopotamia.  Just  as  the  importance  of  establish- 
ing an  intermediate  station  in  Erzerum  had  become  clear  to 
them  on  their  journeyings  to  Urmia,  so  did  it  happen  in  the 
case  of  Diarlehr,  on  their  way  to  Mosul.  This  important 
ancient  city  was  the  end  of  the  weary  overland  journey. 
Thence  they  floated  down  to  Mosul  in  a  few  days,  on  inflated 
sheepskins  or  on  simple  wooden  rafts.  Diarbekr  was  occupied 
in  1851.  Soon  it  became  evident  that  there  was  a  favourable 
opening  in  the  neighbouring  districts  lying  to  the  north  and 
northwest.  The  missionaries  seized  the  opportunity  the  more 
joyfully  because  they  thus  won  an  entrance  into  the  heart 
of  the  original  home  of  the  Armenians. 

Eharput,  on  the  upper  Euphrates,  boldly  situated  on  a 
precipitous  mountain,  became  in  1855  the  first  mission  centre 
for  this  district.  Arabkir,  which  was  afterwards  attached  to 
Kharput,  had  been  occupied  two  years  earlier.  In  the  course 
of  the  years  other  stations  were  added — Sivas,  farther  west, 
Bitlis  and  Yan  to  the  east  and  northeast  respectively.  In 
1860  this  district  was  organized  as  the  "  Mission  in  Eastern 
Turkey." 

For  some  decades  there  was  to  the  south  and  southwest 
another  group  of  stations  forming  the  "  Assyrian  "  or  "  East 
Syrian "  Mission.  When  the  Board  began  a  vigorous  work 
among  the  Mountain  Nestorians  in  the  wild  and  pathless 
highlands  lying  between  the  middle  Tigris  and  the  Lake  of 
Urmia,  it  seemed  to  be  indispensable,  on  account  of  the 
difficult  travelling,  to  establish  a  station  as  a  resting-place  on 
the  opposite  Mesopotamian  side  of  this  mountain  waste. 
Mosul  was  fixed  upon  for  this  purpose,  which,  however, 
salubrious  and  central  as  it  was,  was  unbearably  hot  during 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       1 17 

the  three  summer  months.  The  station  had  to  be  abandoned 
temporarily  in  1844,  when  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
of  America  settled  there  in  order  to  commence  a  mission 
among  the  ISTestorians.  The  Board  wished  to  avoid  friction. 
That  mission,  however,  left  Mosul  a  few  years  later,  and  the 
Board  reoccupied  it  in  1849,  in  order  to  make  a  further  ad- 
vance into  the  Nestorian  highlands.  This  work  was  very 
arduous,  and  many  noble  lives  were  lost  on  the  long  and 
fatiguing  journeys  to  Mosul.  So  it  became  evident  that 
Mosul  lay  too  far  away  to  serve  the  purpose  for  which  a 
station  had  been  founded  there,  and  it  was  abandoned  in 
1860. 

The  missionaries  [working  in  the  Mosul  district  had  come 
into  close  contact  with  the  Jacobites,  whose  ecclesiastical 
language,  like  that  of  the  Nestorians,  is  a  Syrian  dialect, 
which,  however,  is  no  longer  understood  by  the  common 
people,  who  know  only  Arabic.  The  religious  centre  of  these 
Jacobites  is  Mardin,  a  town  lying  in  a  high  and  healthful 
position  above  the  Mesopotamian  plain.  Unfortunately  the 
Roman  Church  long  ago  gained  a  strong  influence  among  the 
people,  and  has  split  them  up  into  two  parties.  The  Americans 
began  their  work  here  in  1858.  In  1860  the  stations  at 
Diarbekr,  Mosul  and  Mardin  were  organized  as  the  "  Assyrian 
Mission,"  of  which  we  have  already  spoken.  When  Mosul 
was  given  up,  it  seemed  advisable  to  connect  the  other  two 
stations  with  the  "East  Turkish  Mission,"  The  work  in 
Mardin  is  still  rather  isolated,  Mardin  being  the  only  station 
of  the  Board  where  the  work  is  carried  on  in  Arabic. 

The  work  in  Asia  Minor  was  also  extended.  Marsovan, 
which  lies  inland  from  the  middle  of  the  northern  coast,  be- 
came a  station  in  1851.  Other  stations  were  added,  in  Tokat, 
where  Henry  Martyn  died  ;  in  Amasia,  where  Strabo,  the 
great  geographer,  was  born ;  in  C^sarea,  the  ancient  capital 
of  Cappadocia,  the  birthplace  of  the  two  distinguished 
brothers,  Basil  the  Great  and  Gregory  of  Nyssa;  and  in 
other  towns.  These  stations  were  organized  in  1860  as  the 
"  "West  Turkish  Mission."    Doors  seemed  to  be  opened  every- 


1 18     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

where.  Even  in  notoriously  fanatical  places  the  hostility  of 
the  people  was  overcome  and  their  confidence  won.  In 
Diarbekr.  where  at  first  not  even  the  lives  of  the  missionaries 
were  safe,  ten  years  later  the  townspeople  extended  a  truly- 
royal  welcome  to  a  missionary  on  his  return.  In  Hadjin  and 
Zeitun  the  missionaries  were  at  first  in  the  greatest  danger, 
and  were  obliged  to  flee  for  their  lives  ;  five  years  later  their 
successors  were  besieged  day  and  night  by  eager  hearers, 
wishing  to  learn  from  them. 

It  would  lead  us  too  far  to  follow  up  in  detail  the  history 
of  the  stations  and  missions.  We  must  not  even  try  to  give 
a  complete  list  of  the  stations  among  which  there  have  been 
so  many  changes  in  the  course  of  years.  SuflBce  it  to  say 
that  the  centres  of  the  Armenian  population  were  occupied 
by  the  mission.  From  Erzerum  attempts  were  even  made  to 
push  forward  into  Russian  Armenia,  lying  close  at  hand; 
but  here  the  intolerance  of  the  Russian  Church  was  a  great 
hindrance. 

The  personnel  of  the  American  Mission  has  always  been 
large  and  distinguished.  As  a  rule  there  have  been  forty 
men  regularly  employed  as  ordained  and  medical  missionaries 
and  as  teachers  ;  and,  including  the  missionaries'  wives,  about 
sixty  ladies.  The  term  of  service  has,  owing  to  the  healthful 
climate,  been  on  the  average  a  long  one.  The  expenses  have 
been  partially  met  since  1854  by  the  "  Turkish  Missions'  Aid 
Society "  in  England,  which  has  contributed  from  £2,000  to 
£2,500  annually. 

With  a  view  to  supporting  the  Turkish  Mission  of  the 
American  Board,  the  Turkish  Missions'  Aid  Society  was 
formed  on  the  3d  of  July,  1854,  chiefly  through  the  efforts  of 
the  Rev.  C.  G.  Young.  Contributions  came  from  members  of 
different  British  denominations,  the  Aid  Society  following  its 
own  principles  in  distributing  its  funds.  While  not  helping 
to  meet  such  expenses  as  those  of  missionaries'  salaries, 
dwellings  and  travel,  they  liberally  supported  the  native 
clergy,  the  schools,  the  orphanages  and  the  hospitals.  Es- 
pecially in  times  of  trouble,  as  during  the  Armenian  massacres 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       1 1 9 

of  1895  and  1896,  and  the  Macedonian  disturbances  of  1905 
and  1906,  the  Society  rendered  much  help.  After  1893  its 
name  was  changed  to  "  The  Bible  Lands'  Mission  Aid  Society," 
on  account  of  the  extension  of  its  support  to  almost  all  the 
missions  in  the  Near  East.  It  is  a  magnificent  and  pleasing 
expression  of  English  sympathy  with  the  missions  in  this  im- 
portant and  attractive  field,  in  which  there  is  comparatively 
little  done  directly  by  English  missionary  societies. 

The  inner  development  of  the  mission  kept  pace  with  its 
territorial  extension.  Its  churches  naturally  followed  the 
pattern  of  American  Congregationalism.  On  the  1st  of  July, 
1846,  a  week  after  the  excommunication  of  the  Protestants 
by  the  Patriarch  Matteos,  the  first  congregation  was  es- 
tablished in  Constantinople.  The  procedure  in  this  case  is 
typical  of  the  founding  of  later  churches. 

The  Protestant  Armenians  applied  by  letter  to  the  mis- 
sionaries for  help  in  this  unaccustomed  work.  They  received 
a  working  scheme  for  a  "  Protestant  Armenian  Church," 
which  was  set  on  foot  on  the  1st  of  July.  After  prayer  had 
been  offered  and  a  passage  of  Scripture  read,  the  Confession 
of  Faith,  the  Covenant  and  the  Kules  of  Discipline  were  read 
and  explained.  Then  all  present  were  summoned  to  indicate 
their  consent  by  standing  up.  All  arose  and  responded  after 
every  article  of  the  Confession,  "  Thus  we  believe."  In  the 
same  way  they  gave  their  consent  to  the  Covenant.  Then 
the  missionaries  and  certain  Europeans  arose  and  pronounced 
the  assembly  to  be  a  true  church  of  Christ.  A  roll  of  mem- 
bers was  then  made,  which  contained  the  names  of  thirty- 
seven  men  and  three  women.  These  members  then  proceeded 
to  elect  a  pastor  by  ballot.  A  man  named  Khatshadurian,  an 
able  Armenian  who  had  already  proved  his  sincerity  by  suf- 
fering for  the  Gospel,  was  chosen.  Other  church  o£B[cers  were 
thereupon  elected.  Finally  Rev.  O.  Dwight  was  requested  to 
assist  the  inexperienced  pastor  for  a  while.  A  week  later  a 
special  meeting  of  the  missionaries  was  called  in  order  to 
ordain  Khatshadurian.  He  was  ordained  with  the  laying  on 
of  hands.     A  pamphlet  was  issued  by  the  congregation  justi- 


120     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

tying  and  describing  its  procedure.  The  process  of  constitu- 
ting congregations  was  similar  everywhere  in  Turkey,  though 
the  degree  of  formality  varied.  The  missionaries  always 
adhered  to  the  plan  of  letting  the  assembled  Protestants 
choose  their  own  pastor  and  other  church  officials,  who  then 
organized  the  ministry  and  other  congregational  matters  as 
best  they  were  able.  To  be  sure,  this  democratic  method  is 
not  altogether  suited  to  the  Eastern  mind.  After  ages  of 
autocratic  rule,  it  was  at  first  difficult  for  them  to  accustom 
themselves  to  a  democratic  constitution,  which  entailed  both 
the  privileges  and  the  duties  of  autonomy.  Sometimes  they 
exhibited  a  childish  spirit  of  rebellion  against  the  authority 
of  the  missionaries,  e.  g.,  in  1861,  when  the  congregation  at 
Pera  separated  itself  from  the  mission  because  they  were  not 
granted  the  right  to  dispose  of  money  sent  from  America  for 
the  mission.  At  other  times,  through  ignorance  and  want  of 
experience,  they  committed  faults  which  were  difficult  to 
remedy.  Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, there  lay  a  well-nigh  inestimable  advantage  in 
the  plan  of  conceding  what  was  nearly  unlimited  congrega- 
tional freedom.  The  task  of  the  missionaries  was,  not  to  sow 
the  first  seeds  of  Christianity  among  heathen,  but  to  raise  a 
people  that  had  for  centuries  possessed  Christian  feelings, 
thoughts  and  aspirations,  to  a  higher  level  of  Christian  life 
and  knowledge.  It  was  necessary  to  put  an  end  to  the 
guardianship  and  autocratic  rule  of  the  clergy,  which  had 
been  a  barrier  to  higher  development.  To  effect  this  the 
American  democratic  ideals  were  highly  adapted,  perhaps 
more  so  than  the  constitution  of  an  Episcopal  Church.  So, 
after  all,  the'disadvantage  of  possible  democratic  excesses  was 
outweighed  by  the  resultant  training  in  self-reliance. 

We  mentioned  before  that  every  recognized  Church  in 
Turkey  enjoys  a  certain  amount  of  autonomy.  It  was  a  wise 
act  of  the  Board  that  its  missionaries  conceded  those  privileges 
accorded  to  the  Protestants  by  the  firman  of  1850,  without 
any  restriction,  to  the  newly  formed  congregations.  "With 
people  of  so  strong  a  national  feeling  as  the  Armenians,  the 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       121 

only  hope  of  extending  Protestantism  lies  in  keeping  the 
foreign  element  in  the  background,  especially  in  matters  of 
church  government.  Further,  the  Board  soon  found  that 
a  mistake  had  been  made  at  the  outset  in  supplying  money 
too  plentifully  for  congregational  and  educational  purposes, 
as  well  as  for  salaries,  buildings  and  other  ends.  As  the 
Armenians  had  ever  been  accustomed  to  make  great 
pecuniary  sacrifices  for  their  churches  and  their  ministry,  it 
was  only  fair  that  the  Protestant  congregations  should  be  as 
far  as  possible  self-supporting,  even  should  this  require 
strenuous  effort  on  the  part  of  small  communities.  Here,  as 
in  other  missions,  self-support  was  a  lesson  learned  by  Prot- 
estant converts  only  after  painful  experience ;  for  they  did 
not  readily  abandon  the  convenient  theory  that  the  money 
sent  out  from  America  was  not  intended  for  the  missionaries 
but  for  themselves. 

The  newly  formed  congregations  were  at  first  sorely  isolated 
in  various  parts  of  Asiatic  Turkey.  It  became  evident  that 
they  must  have  some  kind  of  union,  however  loose.  For 
there  were  several  things  to  be  done  which  could  not  be  left 
to  each  congregation,  as,  for  instance,  the  formation  and  ac- 
knowledgment of  new  congregations,  the  ordination  and  dis- 
missal of  ministers  and  the  granting  or  withdrawal  of  licenses 
to  preach.  Some  kind  of  board  of  appeal  was  also  evidently 
required.  Further,  the  great  distances  separating  the  con- 
gregations rendered  a  yearly  conference  all  the  more  necessary. 
So  several  congregational  unions  were  formed.  They  coincided 
only  partially  with  the  several  missions  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  and  thus  exhibited  most  strikingly  the  abstention  of 
the  missionaries  from  mingling  in  church  affairs.  Such  a 
union  was  formed  in  Kharput  in  1865,  under  the  name  of 
"  The  Kharput  Protestant  Union."  In  1864  certain  congrega- 
tions in  Brusa,  Nicomedia,  Adabazar  and  the  neighbourhood 
had  united  as  "  The  Union  of  the  Protestant  Armenian 
Churches  of  Bithynia."  This  union  acquired  later  particular 
importance  by  joining  with  the  congregations  in  Constanti- 
nople.    A  third,  "  The  Central  Turkish  Protestant  Union^* 


122     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

was  formed  in  Marsovan  in  1868,  while  a  fourth,  "  The 
Cilician  Union,'' ^  was  formed  in  the  south.  These  unions  had 
a  decided  effect  in  developing  a  spirit  of  self-government. 
After  a  visitation  from  America  in  1883,  the  unions  were 
constitutionally  organized  and  extended. 

The  characteristic  feature  of  the  inner  life  of  these  congre- 
gations is  the  general  adoption  of  the  Congregational  principle 
of  distinguishing  between  the  communicant  members  and  the 
adherents.  All  the  seceders  from  the  old  Church  had  already 
been  baptized  and  confirmed  and  their  children  had  also  been 
baptized  as  infants.  So  it  was  very  surprising  and  puzzling  to 
them  when  they  learned  that  the  Americans  admitted  but  a 
small  number  to  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  permitted  only  the 
children  of  communicants  to  be  baptized,  especially  as  it  was 
the  exaggerated  and  almost  superstitious  view  of  the  sacra- 
ment which  had  contributed  in  no  small  measure  to  the  petri- 
faction of  the  Oriental  Churches.  Under  the  new  regime  they 
must  pass  an  examination  to  gain  admission  to  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per, an  examination  often  by  no  means  easy.  In  one  place 
twenty  candidates  were  examined  for  ten  hours,  after  which 
only  eleven  of  them  were  considered  fit  for  admission.  It 
will,  perhaps,  be  best  to  describe  the  case  of  a  single  congre- 
gation, which,  after  passing  through  the  stage  of  utter 
astonishment,  at  last  accustomed  itself  to  this  congregational 
practice. 

In  Diarbekr  the  pious  and  zealous  medical  missionary,  Dr. 
Azariah  Smith,  founded  in  1851  a  small  Protestant  church  of 
about  fifty  Armenians  and  Jacobites,  eleven  of  whom  he  ad- 
mitted as  communicant  members.  As  soon  as  it  became 
known  that  only  those  who  were  of  reputed  'piety  would  be 
recognized  as  communicant  members,  influential  Jacobites  en- 
deavoured to  have  the  rule  altered,  so  that  any  Protestant  of 
irreproachable  character  should  be  regarded  as  a  full  member 
without  further  test.  There  ensued  much  controversy  and  the 
Protestant  cause  was  all  but  ruined,  as  the  natives  threatened 
to  return  to  their  old  Churches.  At  length  Dr.  Smith  per- 
suaded them  to  listen  to  a  sermon  on  Luke  18 :  18-30  and 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        123 

Acts  2  :  43-47,  in  which  he  set  forth  the  ideal  of  the  "  one  holy 
Catholic  Church  "  in  glowing  words.  The  diflSculty  subsided 
for  a  time.  But  by  the  year  1854  friction  had  again  become 
so  violent  that  the  church  of  communicant  members  had  to 
be  dissolved.  A  new  examination  took  place,  and  again  only 
eleven  out  of  twenty  candidates  were  admitted.  For  a  time 
there  was  again  a  calm.  But  eight  years  later  there  arrived  a 
Protestant  Scripture  reader,  Garabed,  a  protege  of  Samuel 
Gobat,  then  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  who  had  in  Jerusalem  be- 
come acquainted  with  the  rules  of  the  Anglican  Church.  He 
maintained  that  all  adult  Protestants  should  be  admitted  to  the 
Lord's  Supper,  and  their  children  baptized  without  exception. 
This  naturally  gave  rise  to  new  trouble  and  a  further  crisis. 

As  there  was  no  central  authority  for  the  Churches,  the 
missionaries  travelled  hither  and  thither  trying  to  establish 
their  influence  in  the  congregations,  supporting,  comforting, 
advising  and  admonishing  both  the  native  pastors  and  catechists 
and  the  congregations  themselves.  In  some  cases,  as  in 
Kharput,  special  men  were  set  apart  for  this  evangelizing 
work  within  the  Protestant  community. 

In  1846  the  Board  began  to  pay  special  attention  to  educa- 
tional work.  After  the  Protestants  in  Turkey  had  been 
formed  into  separate  communities  side  by  side  with  the  other 
Churches,  it  was  necessary,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  to  pro- 
vide a  separate  educational  system  for  the  youth  of  the  con- 
gregations. This  was  done  by  establishing  primary  schools, 
which  the  church-members  were  expected  to  maintain  as  soon 
as  they  should  be  able  to  do  so.  Even  more  necessary  was  it 
to  train  able  and  reliable  teachers  and  ministers  under  Prot- 
estant influence.  We  have  already  told  how  the  Board  be- 
gan its  educational  work  in  Constantinople  by  establishing  ad- 
vanced schools  with  a  view  to  attracting  promising  young 
Armenians.  This  undertaking  was  now  abandoned,  for  the 
expense  of  such  institutions  was  excessive,  nor  did  they  seem 
altogether  necessary  as  a  pioneering  agency,  since  there  was  at 
that  time  a  general  interest  in  the  Gospel  among  the  Armenians. 
The  Board  wished  to  devote  attention  to  the  congregations, 


1 24     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

and  to  respond  to  the  calls  for  teachers,  catechists  and  pastors, 
which  came  to  them  from  all  quarters.  This  task  of  training  a 
native  ministry  was  diflBcult  enough  in  view  of  the  democratic 
principles  of  the  Congregational  mission.  As  each  congrega- 
tion is  independent,  it  exercises  its  own  judgment  in  the  elec- 
tion of  a  pastor,  teacher  or  catechist.  The  functions  of  the 
Union  to  which  such  a  church  belongs  are  confined  to  the 
examination,  recognition  and  ordination  of  the  ministry.  So 
the  Board  can  but  provide  institutions  for  the  training  of 
students,  some  of  whom  come  of  their  own  accord  and  at  their 
own  expense,  while  others  are  sent  either  by  the  congrega- 
tions or  the  missionaries.  Their  training  finished,  the  mission 
does  not  undertake  the  responsibility  of  finding  situations 
for  them  or  of  providing  them  with  salaries.  It  is  for  the  in- 
dividual congregations  or  the  unions  or  the  individual  mis- 
sionaries to  engage  such  candidates.  That  is  the  theory  at 
any  rate,  and  it  is  more  and  more  working  out  into  practice. 
Yet,  after  all,  the  influence  of  the  missionaries  is  considerable 
in  the  matter  of  the  engagement  and  work  of  all  teachers  and 
pastors,  by  reason  of  their  superior  insight  and  the  weight  of 
their  opinion  in  all  church  affairs. 

The  schools  have  been  subjected  to  many  changes  both  in 
their  nature  and  in  the  standards  which  they  have  maintained. 
In  Turkey  there  is  no  fixed  system  of  education,  there  being 
neither  a  standard  course  of  study  for  the  pupils  nor  a  re- 
quired grade  of  proficiency  for  the  teachers.  The  entire  matter 
is  left  in  the  hands  of  the  various  religious  bodies.  The  mis- 
sionaries who,  following  home  example,  were  inclined  to  make 
high  demands  on  teachers  and  pupils,  had  to  come  to  an 
agreement  with  the  congregations  as  to  what  the  children 
should  learn  and  what  the  qualifications  of  the  teachers  should 
be.  On  the  latter  point  the  question  as  to  what  salary  the 
congregation  was  able  and  willing  to  give  was  decisive.  It 
was  long  before  the  members  learned  to  appreciate  the  value 
of  a  thorough  primary  education  for  their  children.  It  will  be 
instructive  to  give  the  experience  of  one  congregation  in  this 
matter. 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       125 

In  1872  the  congregation  at  Aintab  applied  to  the  Board 
thus  :  "  We  remember  how  things  stood  twenty-five  or  thirty 
years  ago.  At  that  time  we  did  not  realize  the  necessity  and 
advantages  of  education.  A  population  of  10,000  Armenians 
in  Aintab  was  satisfied  with  one  school,  in  which  reading  and 
writing  could  be  learned.  When,  by  the  action  of  the  Board, 
the  Bible  had  been  translated  into  our  common  language,  our 
views  with  regard  to  schools  underwent  a  change,  we  know 
not  how.  We,  as  Protestant  Armenians,  were  no  longer 
satisfied  with  even  three  or  four  schools,  nor  with  the  fact  that 
only  our  sons  could  be  educated  ;  something  must  be  done  for 
our  daughters  too.  We  found  also  that  ability  merely  to  read 
and  write  did  not  sufiice  ;  the  children  needed  to  be  taught 
more  than  this.  While  at  first  we  were  hardly  willing  to  send 
our  children  to  school,  though  it  was  the  missionaries  who 
bore  the  expense  of  their  education,  now  we  were  willing  to 
establish  secondary  schools  at  our  own  cost.  In  the  light  of 
God's  Word  we  saw  that  we  must  be  educated,  would  we  be- 
come good  Christians,  good  fathers  and  mothers  and  useful 
members  of  society.  This  desire  was  materially  increased  by 
the  fact  that  there  was  among  our  Churches  a  demand  for  a 
better  educated  class  of  men  as  teachers  and  ministers.  All 
the  congregations  in  our  union  are  convinced  that  the  status 
of  the  clergy  must  be  raised." 

The  pastors  and  catechists  too  had  difficulties  of  their  own. 
Preaching  itself  was  almost  unknown  in  the  ancient  Church. 
The  presbyters  and  deacons  of  that  Church  had  only  to  read 
the  long  and  unintelligible  liturgies.  Since  for  this  purpose 
little  more  was  required  than  the  ability  to  read,  there  was  a 
very  low  grade  of  education  prevalent  among  the  lower  clergy. 
It  was  not  easy  to  raise  up  alongside  such  a  clergy  one  that 
was  versed  in  the  Holy  Scriptures,  well  grounded  in  Christian 
doctrine,  and  experienced  in  preaching  and  teaching,  in  the 
care  of  souls  and  in  the  administration  of  church  affairs. 

The  Board  founded  four  theological  seminaries,  or  training- 
schools,  one  for  each  of  the  three  Turkish  Missions :  in  Mar- 
sovan    for   the   Western  Turkish  Mission ;  in  Kharput  for 


126     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Eastern  Turkey  ;  and  for  Central  Turkey  in  Marash.  A  fourth 
had  to  be  provided  in  Mardin  for  those  in  the  southeast  who 
spoke  Arabic.  These  theological  institutions  cannot  be  com- 
pared with  those  of  the  Churches  in  America.  The  training 
in  them  is  confined  to  the  more  important  theological  studies, 
exposition  of  the  Scriptures  standing  in  the  centre  of  the  whole 
course.  Instruction  is  generally  given  in  the  language  of  the 
students.  Little  attention  is  devoted  to  foreign  languages, 
either  English,  Greek  or  Hebrew.  In  order,  however,  to  fit 
the  students  thoroughly  for  their  work  among  their  own  peo- 
ple, they  are  made  acquainted  with  the  ancient  Armenian  and 
the  Turkish  languages. 

It  is  natural  that  the  demand  for  education  should  expand 
in  proportion  to  the  spiritual  advance  of  the  Protestant  Arme- 
nian Church.  While  the  first  students  in  the  seminaries  were 
half  developed  men  without  much  preparatory  training,  it  be- 
came necessary  later  to  provide  a  better  preliminary  training, 
in  order  that  the  work  in  the  theological  seminaries  might  be 
more  thorough  and  fruitful.  Accordingly  intermediate  schools 
were  instituted  between  the  primary  schools  and  the  semina- 
ries. Such  schools  had  to  become  more  numerous,  as  more  boys 
grew  up  in  Protestant  families,  who  wished  to  have  a  better 
education,  that  they  might  enter  the  higher  professions,  not 
exclusively  now  as  teachers  and  ministers.  The  necessity  of 
satisfying  this  demand  was  laid  upon  the  mission  by  the  fact 
that  there  were  no  other  schools  available  for  the  training  of 
these  boys. 

At  this  point  in  our  record  of  the  development  of  educational 
institutions  we  must  view  in  some  detail  the  work  of  Dr.  Cyrus 
Hamlin. 

Cyrus  Hamlin^  was  sent  to  Asia  Minor  in  1838  and  was 
commissioned  in  the  following  year  to  found  the  theolog- 
ical seminary  of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  in  Bebek  near 
Constantinople — no  easy  task  for  a  young  man  of  twenty-eight. 
At  first  the  house  was  small,  the  educational  apparatus  insuffi- 
cient and  the  students  nearly  all  of  them  poor.  It  was  a  task 
*  Dr.  Cjrus  Hamlin  :    "  My  Life  and  Times  Among  the  Turks 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        127 

that  just  suited  Hamlin,  who  knew  how  to  make  the  best  of 
any  situation.  His  inventiveness  so  terrified  the  indolent 
Turks  that  they  regarded  him  as  the  greatest  "sheitan" 
(satan)  in  Constantinople.  It  was  rumoured  that  he  took  a 
photograph  of  every  convert,  and  that,  should  any  of  them 
apostatize,  Hamlin  would  shoot  at  the  picture  or  cut  it  through, 
with  the  result  that  the  man  would  surely  die.  His  electrical 
machine,  it  was  said,  was  for  the  sole  purpose  of  "  making 
Protestants."  If  he  merely  looked  intently  at  an  Armenian 
or  Greek,  he  won  power  over  him.^  But  to  the  poor  and  the 
sick  he  appeared  as  a  guardian  angel,  and  although  he  was  not 
by  profession  a  doctor,  yet  he  was  appointed  as  medical  officer 
for  the  poor  in  the  suburb.  During  a  serious  epidemic  of 
cholera  he  was  indefatigable  in  allaying  the  sufferings  of  the 
sick,  saving  many  lives  by  his  loving  care.  He  never  shunned 
hardship  or  danger.  Once,  during  the  holidays,  one  of  his 
students  fell  ill  and  died  before  Hamlin  could  reach  him. 
When  he  arrived  at  the  house  it  had  been  deserted,  the  dead 
body  having  been  left  in  it.  A  terrified  crowd  stood  outside. 
The  foul  odour  characteristic  of  cholera  issued  from  the  win- 
dow. No  one  had  the  courage  to  help  bury  the  body.  Ham- 
lin at  once  ordered  a  number  of  boards  and  a  hammer  and 
nails  to  be  brought,  and  soon  had  made  a  large  box.  Then 
having  tied  a  cloth  saturated  with  vinegar  over  mouth  and 
nose,  he  entered  the  house,  carried  the  dead  body  out  and  laid 
it  in  the  coffin.  After  that  the  crowd  was  willing  to  complete 
the  burial. 

Such  a  virile  personality  could  not  fail  to  influence  those 
with  whom  he  came  into  contact.  His  college  filled  astonish- 
ingly. He  was  particularly  pleased  that  nearly  a  fourth  part 
of  the  students  came  from  Armenian  or  Greek  manses,  in  spite 
of  the  growing  hostility  to  the  mission  among  the  native 
clergy.  The  greater  number  of  his  eager  students  were  poor, 
unable  even  to  clothe  themselves  decently.  Yet  Hamlin  did 
not  wish  them  to  receive  what  they  lacked  as  charity ;  he 

^  These  are  but  samples  of  the  superstition  that  the  missionaries  frequently 
met  with  among  Oriental  Christians  as  well  as  among  Muhammadans. 


1 28     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

preferred  to  let  them  earn  what  was  necessary.  So  he  ar- 
ranged workshops  in  connection  with  his  college.  In  addition 
to  the  hours  devoted  to  teaching,  he  stood  for  an  hour  every 
morning  at  the  carpenter's  bench,  spent  another  hour  at  mid- 
day at  the  anvil,  and  at  night  arranged  the  work  for  the 
tailors  or  examined  the  mending  of  the  boots.  He  was,  how- 
ever, richly  rewarded  by  the  happy,  busy  spirit  which  he  ob- 
served among  his  boys. 

Then  there  came  the  rupture  with  the  ancient  Church. 
The  converts  were  boycotted,  no  one  having  anything  to  do 
with  the  Protestants,  no  one  employing  them.  It  was  against 
Hamlin's  principles  to  give  the  hungry  Protestants  food  out 
of  charity ;  he  knew  that  he  would  be  rendering  them  better 
service  by  obtaining  work  for  them.  The  outbreak  of  the 
Crimean  "War  and  the  subsequent  formation  of  the  large  camp 
of  the  English  army  on  the  Bosphorus  gave  him  his  opportunity. 
He  determined  to  set  up  a  large  bakery  and  a  flour  mill 
worked  by  steam,  in  order  to  provide  the  poor  Protestants 
with  work  whilst  supplying  bread  to  the  troops.  His  American 
colleagues  shook  their  heads  and  drew  back  from  him  ;  but  he 
was  not  disconcerted,  even  though  the  Board  refused  to  sup- 
ply him  with  the  funds  necessary  for  his  undertaking.  Day 
by  day  he  delivered  at  the  camp  14,000  pounds  of  good  loaves 
of  full  weight,  and  withal  so  punctually  and  honestly  that 
the  military  authorities  quite  seriously  proposed  that  he  should 
supply  the  troops  in  other  places  also.  At  the  close  of  the 
war  Hamlin  discontinued  this  work,  which,  to  the  surprise  of 
his  friends,  had  realized  a  net  gain  of  £5,500.  This  sum  he 
paid  in  to  the  treasurer  of  the  mission  to  the  last  farthing, 
thus  stopping  the  mouths  of  those  who  had  doubted  his  hon- 
esty. 

Nevertheless  Hamlin  left  the  Society  in  1860,  feeling  that 
he  could  not  agree  with  their  educational  methods.  The  sem- 
inary which  he  had  founded  was  to  be  removed  to  Marsovan 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  in  place  of  the  hitherto  prevalent  use  of 
English  in  the  teaching,  the  vernaculars  were  to  be  introduced. 
He  determined  to  continue  his  work  independently,  without 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        129 

means  and  support  as  lie  was.  His  idea  Avas  to  found  in  Con- 
stantinople a  college  on  the  American  pattern,  which  should 
serve  as  a  channel  through  which  to  irrigate  the  parched  fields 
of  the  ancient  Churches,  and  perhaps  even  the  corrupt  Turk- 
ish society,  with  the  life-giving  streams  of  English  Christian 
culture.  But  where  could  he  obtain  the  necessary  means? 
He  visited  the  United  States,  endeavouring  by  lectures  and 
conferences  to  gain  supporters  for  his  scheme,  and  he  succeeded 
in  awakening  enthusiasm  in  the  heart  of  Christopher  Eobert, 
a  New  York  merchant,  with  whose  help,  chiefly,  he  set  to 
work,  calling  his  institution  the  "  Robert  College." 

Plentifully  supplied  with  money ,^  Hamlin  returned  to  Con- 
stantinople, but  only  to  meet  with  new  difficulties.  The  Porte 
refused  to  sanction  such  far-reaching  plans,  for  it  was  not  in  its 
interests  to  permit  its  Christian  subjects  to  be  well  educated. 
Hamlin  was  not  permitted  to  build  on  the  first  site  which  he 
had  bought.  In  buying  a  second  plot  he  made  the  stipulation 
that  he  should  pay  no  money  before  permission  to  build  on  it 
was  granted.  It  was  not  long  before  a  document  in  the  grand 
vizier's  own  handwriting,  granting  him  permission  to  build, 
was  handed  to  him.  Thereupon  he  paid  the  price,  but  hardly 
was  the  money  out  of  his  hands,  when  two  officials  of  the 
Porte  appeared  on  the  site  to  stop  the  building  operations, 
stating  that  there  were  still  "  some  formalities  to  be  attended 
to."  Then  followed  further  difficulties.  The  Jesuits,  who  at 
that  time  were  very  influential,  did  all  in  their  power  to  sup- 
press the  Protestant  college.  In  this  they  were  supported  by 
the  French  and  Russian  ambassadors,  while  the  American 
consul  declared  that  he  was  not  authorized  to  support  Hamlin. 
How  was  the  latter  now  to  carry  out  his  project  ?  Had  he 
not  been  an  American,  he  would  most  likely  have  lost  courage. 
But  he  persevered.  The  further  development  of  the  case  be- 
came so  dramatic,  and  the  denouement  was  so  comical,  that  it 
is  a  pity  we  cannot  give  it  in  detail.  The  visit  of  an  American 
admiral  to  Constantinople,  a  letter  written  by  Hamlin  to  his 

^  At  the  time  of  his  death  in  1878  Mr.  Eobert  had  given  $400,000  for  the  col- 


130     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

consul,  the  outbreak  of  a  rebellion  in  Crete — all  these  operated 
together  and  one  day  Hamlin,  to  his  great  surprise  and  joy, 
not  only  received  permission  from  the  Porte  to  build  his 
college,  but  was  also  informed  that  it  would  be  recognized  as 
a  college  incorporated  by  the  legislature  of  New  York  and 
placed  under  its  protection. 

The  opening  of  the  college  in  Bebek,  five  miles  to  the  north 
of  Constantinople,  took  place  in  1863.  It  stands  in  a  beautiful 
position,  below  it  the  blue  waters  of  the  Bosphorus,  imme- 
diately behind  it  the  bold  ruins  of  the  Rumeli  Castle,  on  every 
side  an  extensive  view  of  the  mountains  of  Asia  and  Europe 
with  their  castles,  towns,  and  villages.  Situated  in  the  midst 
of  such  delightful  surroundings,  picture  to  yourself  an  impo- 
sing structure  that  would  grace  an  American  university. 

The  curriculum  at  the  Kobert  College,  which  is  affiliated 
with  the  New  York  University,  includes,  as  in  similar  institu- 
tions in  America,  a  four  years'  preparatory  course  in  the 
academy,  which  was  supplied  with  a  new  building  called  the 
Theodorus  Hall  in  1902,  and  which  has  at  present  194  students. 
In  the  college  proper  there  is  a  twofold  four  years'  course  in 
arts  and  in  science,  upon  the  successful  completion  of  which  the 
degree  of  B.  A.  or  a  science  degree  is  bestowed.  The  classes 
are  attended  by  about  180  students.  Few,  however,  go  in  for 
the  examinations.  The  college  buildings  include  the  Hamlin 
Hall  and  the  Albert  Long  Hall.  The  entire  property  of  the 
college  contains  twenty-three  acres.  In  addition  to  the  build- 
ings already  mentioned  there  are  a  gymnasium,  five  profess- 
ors' dwellings,  and  numerous  outbuildings,  the  whole  present- 
ing an  imposing  appearance.  But  it  can  hardly  be  called  a 
missionary  institution.  On  principle  it  declines  to  draw  away 
students  from  their  Church  in  order  to  make  them  Protestants. 
Students  are  simply  required  to  attend  daily  morning  and 
evening  prayers  and  the  services  on  Sunday.  There  is  a 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  founded  in  1892  by 
Luther  Wishard,  the  well-known  secretary  of  the  American 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  it  does  much  to  create  a  Christian  atmos- 
phere.   It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that,  although  the  college  lies 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       131 

so  close  to  fanatical  Constantinople,  there  are  among  the  373 
students,  sixteen  Turks,  five  Kurds  and  two  Arabs.  Up  to 
the  year  1905,  2,705  students  passed  through  the  institution.^ 
Cyrus  Hamlin  remained  president  of  the  college  only  till  1873, 
when  he  returned  home  worn  out  with  his  labours.  There  re- 
mained to  him,  however,  a  long  eventide  of  life,  which  he  spent 
as  professor  of  theology.  His  countrymen  heaped  on  him 
high  honours  ;  he  received  the  degrees  of  Doctor  of  Divinity 
and  Doctor  of  Philosophy.  He  died  in  Portland,  Maine,  on 
the  8th  of  August,  1900.  Several  talented  and  able  men  have 
since  been  successful  presidents  of  the  Kobert  College,  e.  ^., 
C.  F.  Gates,  LL.  D.,  D.  D.,  and  George  Washburn,  D.  D. 

The  mission  hesitated  to  follow  the  example  of  Cyrus  Ham- 
lin. It  was  not  their  wish  to  deorientalize  their  pupils  by  im- 
parting an  English  education  to  them,  nor  to  make  them 
dissatisfied  with  their  simpler  life  by  arousing  unattainable 
ambitions  in  their  breasts.  Yet  the  demand  for  higher  edu- 
cation was  growing  apace.  The  need  of  an  educated  ministry, 
too,  was  pressing,  and  there  was  a  sad  gap  between  the 
primary  schools  and  the  theological  seminaries.  In  1874:  the 
first  college  was  founded  in  Aintab.^  Since  then  two  other 
similar  institutions  have  been  opened  for  the  two  other  mis- 
sions, the  Euphrates  College  at  Kharput  in  1876,  and  the 
Anatolia  College  at  Marsovan  in  1886.  All  three  have,  in  the 
course  of  years,  so  developed  that  they  provide  primary, 
secondary,  and  college  education,  along  with  certain  courses 
in  special  subjects.  A  further  stage  of  development  in  the 
general  educational  system  was  entered  upon  about  the  year 
1880.  The  Armenians  had  become  alive  to  the  fact  that,  if 
they  were  to  take  their  proper  place  in  Turkey  and  in  the 
world,  they  must  surpass  the  other  nations  of  the  country  in 
education.    A  great  desire  for  enlightenment  seized  the  Protes- 

^  In  1900,  twelve  former  students  had  entered  the  ministry,  eighty-eight  had 
become  teachers,  fifty  were  state  officials  (especially  in  Bulgaria),  fourteen  were 
judges  and  thirty-seven  medical  men.  Those  who,  after  passing  through  the 
Eobert  College,  wish  to  pursue  study  in  special  subjects,  go  to  the  Syrian  Protes- 
tant College  in  Beirut,  where  they  enjoy  special  advantages. 

8  "  The  Higher  Educational  Institutions  of  the. American  Board,"  Boston,  1904. 


132     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

tants  as  well  as  the  Gregorians.  The  leading  missionaries 
felt  bound  to  satisfy  this  strong  desire.  Consequently  the 
number  of  educational  institutions  has  greatly  increased  dur- 
ing the  last  twenty-five  years,  and  twenty-five  "  high  schools" 
for  boys  have  been  added  to  the  colleges,  most  of  them  board- 
ing-schools. The  standards  of  these  high  schools  are  becoming 
higher  from  year  to  year.  The  English  language  occupies  an 
ever  larger  place. 

In  the  ancient  Church  the  education  of  girls  was  at  a  very 
low  ebb,  and  it  was  long  before  even  the  Protestant  Armenians 
became  aware  that  it  was  necessary  that  the  girls,  too,  should 
at  least  be  taught  Bible  history,  reading,  writing,  and  singing. 
In  the  smaller  congregations  the  girls  attended  the  same 
schools  as  the  boys,  while  in  larger  places  separate  primary 
schools  for  girls  gradually  sprang  up.  It  became  evident  that 
it  was  of  the  utmost  importance  that  the  girls  should  be 
trained  under  the  same  Christian  influences,  if  they  were  to 
become  the  wives  of  teachers  and  elders,  pastors  and  cate- 
chists.  The  first  high  school  for  girls  was  a  school  for  the 
daughters  of  educated  Armenians,  begun  in  Constantinople  on 
lines  similar  to  those  of  the  Bebek  Seminary,  After  the  rup- 
ture of  1846,  however,  this  plan  was  abandoned,  as  it  was 
found  that  the  students  in  the  theological  seminary  were 
mostly  married  men  who  came  with  their  families  to  enter 
upon  the  four  years'  course  of  study.  Thus  it  became  neces- 
sary so  to  arrange  matters  that  the  wives,  too,  should  profit  by 
their  prolonged  stay  in  the  mission  stations,  while  their  hus- 
bands were  attending  the  seminaries.  To  meet  this  want 
a  new  system  of  higher  education  was  tried ;  it  became  even 
more  important  when  female  teachers  for  the  primary  girls' 
schools  and  Bible-women  in  the  churches  came  to  be  needed. 
Add  to  this  that  an  increasing  number  of  the  more  well-to-do 
Armenian  families,  especially  in  Constantinople  and  Smyrna, 
were  willing  at  some  sacrifice  to  afford  their  daughters  the 
advantages  of  a  Protestant  education  in  separate  boarding- 
schools.  In  consequence  of  the  relations  between  the  sexes  in 
the  East,  boarding-schools  are  more  necessary  for  female  educai* 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       133 

tion  than  with  us.  The  result  was  that  in  1871  a  Protestant 
girls'  boarding-school  was  founded  in  Scutari,  near  Constanti- 
nople. 

The  increased  demand  for  knowledge  on  the  part  of  women 
caused  this  side  of  the  educational  system  of  the  mission  to 
grow  in  a  surprising  manner — we  might  almost  say,  too 
quickly.  Perhaps  a  German  writer  is  not  a  fully  competent 
critic  of  American  schemes  for  female  education,  as  it  is 
known  that  Germans  hold  somewhat  different  views  on  the 
position  of  women  in  society  from  the  American  ideals.  So 
Americans  are  inclined  to  extend  to  Oriental  women,  too,  a 
fuller  measure  of  educational  advantages  than  seems  desirable 
or  proper  to  a  German  mind.  An  important  factor  in  this 
development  is  to  be  found  in  the  growing  strength  and  influ- 
ence of  women's  missionary  societies  in  America  which  had 
at  their  disposal  an  ample  supply  of  lady  missionaries  and  of 
means  to  further  their  views.  By  1895  the  number  of  girls' 
boarding-schools  had  increased  to  twenty  with  1,200  boarders. 
Some  of  them,  as  in  Kharput  and  Marash,  became  colleges. 
The  highest  and  most  prominent  institution  is  the  American 
College  for  Girls  at  Scutari,  founded  in  1890,  publicly  recog- 
nized by  an  official  decree,  an  irade  of  the  Sultan,  in  1895, 
and  even  relieved  of  taxation. 

Turkey  has  also  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  medical  missions, 
which  since  1870  have  become  so  prominent  in  the  work  of 
American  missionary  societies.  Medical  missionary  work 
was  begun  at  first  on  a  small  scale  in  all  the  missions,  espe- 
cially in  the  towns  of  Caesarea,  Aintab,  and  Mardin. 

One  of  the  most  prominent  of  the  medical  missionaries  in 
the  service  of  the  American  Board  during  those  earlier  decades 
was  Dr.  Henry  "West,  who,  born  in  1827,  was  sent  in  1859  to 
serve  among  the  Armenians,  being  stationed  at  Sivas.  He 
died  in  1876,  having  worn  himself  out  not  only  by  unremitting 
work  in  his  profession,  but  also  in  the  exercise  of  an  unusual 
ability  for  training  native  assistants  to  become  able  doctors 
themselves.  The  Rev.  E.  Riggs  declares,  "  that  the  best  and 
most  reliable  medical  men  in  the  towns  of  Asia  Minor  were 


134     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

mostly  pupils  of  the  celebrated  medical  missionary,  Dr.  H. 
West."     The  natives  said  of  him,  "  He  is  like  Jesus." 

For  the  fifty  years  following  the  rupture  in  1846  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Protestant  Mission  was  quiet  and  steady. 
The  Board's  report  of  the  year  1895  stated  that  the  Armenian 
Mission  numbered  at  that  time  14,  for  the  most  part  well 
equipped,  main  stations,  and  268  out-stations.  There  were 
46  missionaries  and  one  medical  missionary,  42  missionaries' 
wives,  and  63  other  lady  missionaries,  making  a  total  Ameri- 
can force  of  152  persons.  In  addition  to  these  there  were  90 
Armenian  pastors,  117  catechists,  529  teachers  and  6Q  other 
assistants — a  total  Armenian  force  of  800.  One  hundred  and 
eleven  churches  had  11,835  full  members  and  about  20,000 
adherents.  It  was  calculated  that  there  were  32,092  adults 
and  24,132  children  in  the  Sunday-schools.  Accordingly  the 
entire  Protestant  community  numbered  about  50,000  souls. 
Protestant  influence  was  evidently  on  the  increase  and  the 
prospects  of  the  mission  were  most  promising. 

From  our  report  of  this  missionary  movement  it  might  be 
supposed  that,  after  the  time  of  the  rupture,  the  American 
missionaries  used  all  their  influence  to  increase  their  own 
congregations  by  an  uncompromising  propagandism.  It  must 
be  stated  that,  if  we  look  at  the  mission  as  a  whole,  this 
reproach  seems  to  us  quite  unjust.  It  is  true  that,  after  the 
establishing  of  Protestant  Churches  had  become  a  necessity, 
the  missionaries  shunned  none  of  the  difficulties  connected 
with  the  forming  of  new  congregations  and  schools  in  their 
endeavour  to  lay  a  sure  foundation  for  the  building  up  of  a 
virile  Protestant  ecclesiastical  system.  They  knew  that  a 
considerable  period  of  hatred,  and  even  of  open  hostility, 
would  have  to  elapse  before  the  Gregorians  would  be  in  a 
frame  of  mind  to  judge  them  fairly,  since  their  work  must  lie 
under  the  suspicion  of  being  a  proselytizing  effort  to  destroy 
the  ancient  Church,  an  undertaking  similar  to  the  intrigues 
of  the  Jesuits.  But  in  the  prosecution  of  their  work  they  ever 
kept  in  mind  the  whole  nation,  aiming  to  fill  their  hearts  with 
evangelical  teaching,  to  give  them  a  new  religious  life,  and  to 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       13^ 

raise  them  to  a  higher  moral  level.  The  means  they  employed 
for  this  purpose,  in  the  face  of  much  misrepresentation,  were 
the  distribution  of  the  Bible  and  sound  Protestant  literature, 
and  a  vigorous  work  of  higher  education.  As  they  were  de- 
barred from  working  among  that  portion  of  the  Armenian 
people  which  lived  in  Eussian  territory,  they  had  to  concen- 
trate their  labours  upon  the  Armenians  in  Turkey,  numbering 
144,000,  upon  whom,  therefore,  in  spite  of  their  wide  disper- 
sion, they  have  been  able  to  leave  a  deep  impression.  Perhaps 
the  plainest  proof  of  this  is  that  the  Koman  propaganda,  which 
formerly  had  quite  neglected  education,  began  to  establish 
rival  schools  in  order  to  counteract  the  influence  exercised  by 
the  Protestants.^ 

And  the  Armenians  themselves  became  incited  by  the  Ameri- 
cans to  make  fuller  provision  for  education  in  a  way  quite  new 
in  the  history  of  the  people.  They  established  primary  and  sec- 
ondary schools  for  boys,  and  even  began  to  pay  attention  to 
female  education.  It  seemed  as  if  a  new  spring  time  had  come 
to  the  people.  But  upon  this  promising  development  there  burst 
out  a  devastating  storm  which  threatened  to  destroy  all  the 
splendour  of  the  new  awakening  and  even  to  make  an  end  of 
the  Armenians  as  a  nation — the  fearful  massacres  of  the  years 
1894-1896. 

S.     The  Armenian  Massacres,  1891i,-1896 

(a)  The  Armenian  Question?  The  status  of  the  Zimmies 
throughout  Turkey  is,  generally  speaking,  bad,  and  that  of  the 
Armenians  is  particularly  deplorable.  We  have  already  seen 
that  they  are  almost  everywhere  a  minority  in  the  prov- 
inces which  they  inhabit.  They  form  the  bulk  of  the  popula- 
tion only  in  certain  small  sections  of  their  original  home  and 
in  a  district  of  Cilicia  about  Zeitun.     Their  chief  curse  is  the 

'  There  is  in  Sivas  a  Roman  Catholic  college,  a  rival  of  the  American  Anatolia 
College  in  Maraovan,  and  another  college  in  Mesereh  aa  a  rival  of  the  Euphrates 
College  in  Kharput. 

''James  Bryce,  "  Transcaucasia,"  4th  ed.,  1896.  Hepworth,  "Through 
Armenia." 


]  36     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Kurds.  From  time  immemorial,  as  witness  Xenophon's  "  Ana- 
basis," these  savage  bandits  have  infected  the  wild  mountain 
wastes  of  Eastern  Turkey,  being  subject  to  no  authority,  and 
every  man's  hand  being  against  his  fellow ;  terrible  neigh- 
bours for  a  quiet,  unarmed,  agricultural  population  such  as 
the  Armenians  were  in  their  home  country.  Only  the  mailed 
fist  of  a  strong  government  could  have  compelled  the  rebellious 
Kurdish  sheikhs  to  leave  their  peaceable  neighbours  unmo- 
lested. The  Ottoman  Porte  had  not  even  the  desire  to  do  so, 
since  the  Kurds  are,  at  least  nominally,  Muhammadans,  and 
the  Armenians  "  Christian  dogs."  As  early  as  1855  the  Eng- 
lish general,  Sir  Fenwick  "Williams,  who,  from  personal 
observations  during  the  Crimean  War,  had  become  aware  of 
the  danger  threatening  the  Armenians,  stated  in  a  Blue 
Book  report,  that  the  Armenian  provinces  were  subjected  to 
systematic  and  abominable  oppression  in  all  matters  of  daily 
life,  that  the  Turkish  government  was  an  organized  tyranny, 
the  like  of  which  was  not  to  be  seen  elsewhere  in  the  world, 
and  that  no  words  could  fitly  describe  the  infamous  character 
and  behaviour  of  the  Turkish  police  ("  Turkey,"  Vol.  XYII, 
1877,  No.  6,  p.  3). 

A  new  age  seemed  to  be  dawning  for  Armenia  when,  in  the 
Peace  of  San  Stephano  on  the  3d  of  March,  1878,  Turkey 
solemnly  pledged  herself  to  Eussiato  introduce  radical  reforms, 
making  a  similar  promise  to  the  Concert  of  the  great  European 
Powers  at  the  subsequent  Berlin  Congress  in  the  summer  of 
the  same  year.  The  sixty-first  section  of  the  Acts  of  the  Con- 
gress required  of  the  Porte  that  it  should  without  delay  carry 
out  such  reforms  as  were  demanded  by  the  circumstances 
existing  in  the  provinces  inhabited  by  Armenians,  and  as 
would  be  sufiicient  to  protect  the  latter  against  the  Circassians 
and  Kurds.  The  Porte  was  to  report  from  time  to  time  to 
the  six  signatory  powers,  which  took  upon  themselves  the 
duty  of  seeing  that  the  reforms  were  carried  out.  England, 
in  addition,  received  from  the  Sultan  at  the  Cyprus  Conven- 
tion on  the  4th  of  June,  1878,  a  promise  that  he  would  intro- 
duce such  reforms  as  the  two  powers  might  agree  to  be  neces- 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       137 

sary  for  the  protection  of  the  Christians  and  other  subjects  of 
the  Porte  in  Armenia.  These  clear  and  promising  provisions 
appeared  to  the  Armenians  to  assure  them  relief  from  op- 
pression.    But  cruel  disappointment  was  in  store  for  them. 

There  are  few  chapters  of  European  history  which  present 
so  deplorable  a  picture  of  hopeless  confusion  and  repeated 
failure,  as  the  story  of  the  many  and  weary  negotiations 
between  the  cabinets  of  Europe  and  the  Porte  concerning 
Armenian  reforms.  Of  what  nature  should  the  reforms  be  ? 
Did  Europe  wish  to  found  a  semi-autonomous  principality  in 
Greater  Armenia  similar  to  those  in  Samos  and  Crete,  or  a 
Pashalik  with  a  Christian  pasha  at  its  head  as  in  the  Lebanon 
since  18G2  ?  Either  plan  would  be  difficult  on  account  of  the 
strong  Muhammadan  population  in  the  provinces.  Nor  did 
Eussia  at  all  wish  to  have  near  her  Caucasian  boundary  a 
national  Armenian  state  which  might  bar  her  advance  into 
Asia  Minor,  and  which  would  be  certain  to  fill  the  million  of 
Armenians  in  Russia  with  a  strong  desire  to  be  attached  to 
the  independent  Armenia.  Yet  no  one  could  suggest  any 
other  program  of  reform. 

The  Sultan  alone  knew  that  he  had  determined  to  nullify 
every  reform  which  might  be  suggested.  Abdul  Hamid  II 
had  been  on  the  throne  since  1876,  a  man  of  great  energy  and 
a  fanatical  Moslem.  The  demands  of  the  powers  appeared 
to  him  unreasonable,  and  he  knew  that  all  good  Moslems 
would  be  of  the  same  opinion.  Should  the  Zimmies,  then,  be 
put  on  social  equality  with  the  Muhammadans  and  even  per- 
haps be  set  over  them  as  their  magistrates  ?  As  subjects 
under  the  lash  of  the  Moslems  the  Zimmies  might  be  tolerated, 
for  they  were  after  all  the  best  taxpayers  in  Turkey.  But  to 
grant  them  equal  rights  was  contrary  to  the  holy  law.  This 
must  at  all  costs  be  prevented.  Any  attempt  on  their  part  to 
gain  equality  was  in  itself  rebellion.  An  incautious  Turkish 
minister  was  but  saying  what  he  thought  when  he  cynically 
remarked  that  the  best  way  to  get  rid  of  the  Armenian  ques- 
tion was  to  get  rid  of  the  Armenians.  And  this  was  the  plan 
Abdul  Hamid  adopted.     Such  characteristically  Muhammadan 


138     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

logic  was  the  more  welcome  to  the  Turks  since  they  were 
aware  of  the  fact  that  the  Armenians  excelled  both  Turks 
and  Kurds  in  all  industrial  pursuits  and  especially  in  com- 
merce and  the  trades,  for  on  such  undertakings  the  Armenians 
had  concentrated  their  great  mental  powers.  Consequently 
they  had  become  prosperous,  while  the  Turks  had  become  im- 
poverished. The  Armenians  were  the  owners  of  the  caravans, 
while  the  Turks  were  their  drivers  and  stable  boys.  Arme- 
nians had  acquired  possession  of  the  finest  houses  and  the  most 
valuable  estates.  All  this  was  opposed  to  the  Muhammadan 
conception  of  the  position  of  a  subject  nation.  Is  it,  then,  to 
be  wondered  at  that,  jealous  as  they  were,  and  unable  to  com- 
pete in  a  fair  way  with  the  diligent,  talented  and  capable 
Armenians,  the  Turks  resorted  to  the  sword,  to  "  get  rid  of  " 
the  latter  in  cold  blood  ? 

Unfortunately  some  of  the  Armenians  provided  an  excuse 
for  the  barbarous  treatment  to  which  they  were  subjected. 
It  is  generally  admitted  that,  both  in  town  and  country,  they 
had  ever  been  as  a  nation  quiet  subjects  without  any  thought 
of  rebellion,  though  sorely  oppressed.  Kebellion  would  be 
folly,  for  it  could  but  bring  on  them  sure  ruin.  They  had  no 
experience  in  politics,  and  the  only  weapons  they  were  per- 
mitted to  carry  were  daggers  and  swords  and  primitive  match- 
locks. Could  they  with  these  meet  the  rifles  and  cannon  of 
newest  pattern  possessed  by  the  Turkish  soldiers  ?  Further- 
more Abdul  Hamid  had  in  1891  raised  a  light  irregular  troop 
of  cavalry,  the  "  Hamidiye  "  regiments,  from  among  the  wild 
Kurds,  who  were  robbers  by  trade  and  ever  ready  to  swoop 
down  upon  the  Christians.  Yet,  in  spite  of  the  obvious  folly 
of  rebellion,  Armenian  emigrants  in  various  countries  of 
Europe  and  America  had  been  forming  secret  societies  for  the 
purpose  of  remedying  the  miserable  condition  of  their  home- 
land. It  has  never  become  known  how  these  "  Hunchiagists  " 
or  "  Hunkachists  "  were  organized,  what  their  objects  were  in 
particular,  nor  what  their  plan  of  operations.  Now  and  then 
traces  of  them  are  met  with  in  Consular  Keports.  Unfortu- 
nately their  very  existence  and  work  lent  a  shadow  of  justice 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       139 

to  the  Porte  in  dealing  harshly  with  the  peaceable  and  de- 
fenseless Armenians.  The  government  caused  a  rumour  to 
spread  throughout  Europe  and  Turkey  that  a  rebellion  among 
Ithe  Armenians  was  imminent.  Thus  the  poor  people,  already 
in  the  clutches  of  Turkey,  came  to  lose  the  sympathy  of 
Christian  Europe  as  well.  It  was  no  doubt,  also,  due  to  this 
panic  about  a  rebellion  that  the  wild  rage  of  the  Turks  and 
Kurds  burst  into  flame.  Only  in  rare  cases  did  the  Turkish 
authorities  have  common  sense  enough  at  once  to  seize  and 
imprison  the  few  Armenian  agitators.  In  reality  it  pleased 
them  better  to  make  the  existence  of  such  agitation  an  excuse 
for  a  general  massacre.  And  it  is  true  that  some  of  the  Ar- 
menian communities  received  the  revolutionists  with  open 
arms,  and  permitted  themselves  to  be  worked  up  into  an  ex- 
cited state,  in  which  they  committed  reprehensible  acts,  thus 
damaging  the  national  cause.  Bitlis  and  Yan  were  especially 
dangerous  lurking  places  of  the  rebels.^ 

(h)  The  Massacres?  In  the  wild  mountain  district  of  Sas- 
sun,  south  of  Mush,  trouble  had  arisen  between  the  Arme- 
nians and  the  Kurds,  and  the  former  had  declared  to  the  gov- 
ernor that  they  could  not  pay  their  taxes,  if  the  Kurds  robbed 
them  of  all  they  possessed.  This  the  governor  regarded  as 
rebellion  and  in  August,  1894,  he  advanced  against  the  peace- 
able peasants  with  a  large  force  of  regulars,  Hamidiye,  and 
other  Kurds.  The  peasants  were  slaughtered  or  dispersed, 
and  their  villages  plundered  and  burnt.  According  to  the 
statement  of  the  British  consul,  900  Armenians  lost  their  lives. 

^  After  his  escape  to  America,  Fia  Bey,  who  during  the  whole  time  of  the 
massacres  was  the  unscrupulous  instrument  of  the  Sultan  and  of  Fehim  Pasha, 
the  infamous  head  of  the  palace  spies,  cynically  exposed  the  secret  machinery  of 
that  bloodshed  to  reporters  and  interviewers.  A  treacherous  clique  around  the 
Sultan  arranged  the  Armenian  demonstrations  in  Constantinople  and  afterwards 
convinced  the  Sultan  that  most  dangerous  plots  were  being  laid,  and  that  his 
throne  and  life  were  endangered  by  the  Armenian  revolutionists.  "So  Abdul 
Hamid  ordered  the  massacres,  not  knowing  that  his  own  officials  had  organized 
the  revolutionary  demonstrations  "  {Sonnenaufgang,  Vol.  XI,  p.  171). 

'Dr.  Job.  Lepsius,  "Armenien  und  Europa,"  1896.  "Les  Massacres  d'Ar- 
menie."  Documents  Diplomatiqties;  Affaires  Armeniennes,'Pana,  1897.  J.  Kendel 
Harris,  "Letters  from  Armenia,"  1897. 


140     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

The  first  massacre  caused  a  great  sensation.  England  brought 
renewed  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  Sultan  to  cause  him  to 
carry  out  the  reforms  he  had  promised,  and  on  the  11th  of 
May,  1895,  laid  a  complete  scheme  of  reforms  before  the 
Porte,  to  the  effect  that  an  equal  number  of  Christian  and  of 
Muhamraadan  officials  should  be  appointed  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Armenian  provinces,  with  a  joint  Board  at  their 
head.  The  Sultan  now  saw  that  the  affair  was  becoming 
serious.  Yet  at  the  same  time  he  rejoiced  to  observe  that 
there  was  no  unanimity  among  the  European  Powers,  and 
that  therefore  no  effective  interference  could  at  once  take 
place.  He  therefore  determined  to  adopt  radical  measures 
to  reduce  the  number  of  Armenians  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
render  any  reforms  superfluous. 

From  September  30th  until  December  29th,  massacre  fol- 
lowed massacre  in  quick  succession,  in  Constantinople  on  Sep- 
tember 30th,  in  Akhissar  on  October  3d,  in  Trebizond  on 
the  8th,  in  Erzingyan  on  the  21st,  in  Baiburt  on  the  25th,  in 
Bitlis  on  the  27th,  in  Erzerum  on  the  30th,  in  Arabkir  from 
the  1st  to  the  5th  of  November,  in  Diarbekr  on  November  1st, 
in  Malatia  from  the  4th  to  the  9th,  in  Kharput  on  the  10th, 
in  Sivas  on  the  12th,  in  Amasiah,  Marsovan  and  Aintab  on 
the  15th,  in  Marash  on  the  18th,  in  Kaisarieh  on  the  30th,  in 
Urfu,  twice,  on  October  26th  and  on  the  28th  and  29th  of 
December.  Other  isolated  massacres  followed  in  1896,  in 
Van  on  June  26th,  and  in  Constantinople  from  the  26th  to 
the  28th  of  August. 

The  slaughter  of  Armenians  was  a  joy  to  the  Turks.  A 
massacre  was  heralded  by  the  blowing  of  trumpets  and  con- 
cluded by  a  procession.  Accompanied  by  the  prayers  of  the 
mollahs  or  the  muezzins,  who  from  the  minarets  implored  the 
blessing  of  Allah,  the  slaughter  was  accomplished  in  admi- 
rable order  according  to  a  well  arranged  plan.  The  crowd, 
supplied  with  arms  by  the  authorities,  joined  most  amicably 
with  the  soldiers  and  the  Kurdish  Hamidiye  on  these  festive 
occasions.  Every  one  was  in  a  good  humour.  The  Turkish 
women  stimulated  their  heroes  by  raising  the  guttural  shriek 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       141 

of  their  war  cry,  the  Zilghit,  and  deafened  the  hopeless  de- 
spair of  their  victims  by  singing  their  nuptial  songs.  A  kind 
of  wild,  cannibal  humour  seized  the  crowd.  Here  an  officer 
shouted,  "  Down  with  the  Armenians,  it  is  the  Sultan's  will ; " 
there  a  Wall  exhorted  them,  "  Look  alive !  cease  not  to  kill 
and  plunder  and  pray  for  the  Sultan."  Why  should  they 
cease  to  pray,  or  abstain  from  the  slaughter  ?  Were  they  not 
promised  a  reward  for  their  pious  actions?  And  were  not 
the  stores  of  the  Armenian  merchants  and  their  dwelling- 
houses  full  of  treasures  ?  Were  they  not  sure,  also,  not  to  be 
punished  ?  Nay,  had  not  a  paternal  government  made  ar- 
rangements for  its  faithful  subjects  to  enable  them  to  murder 
at  their  own  sweet  will,  without  any  danger  to  themselves,  so 
that  in  fact  it  was  as  safe  as  slaughtering  sheep  ? 

The  savage  crew  did  not  even  spare  the  children.  Of  what 
use  was  this  brood,  whose  parents  were  either  dead  or  had 
fled  ?  To  save  a  year-old  baby  from  an  orphan's  woes  the 
Huhammadans  of  a  village  near  Marash  threw  it  into  the 
fire !  In  Baiburt  they  burned  suckling  babes  with  their 
mothers  in  fourteen  houses.  Ohannes  Avakian,  a  rich  man 
of  Trebizond,  offered  the  attacking  party  all  his  wealth  if 
they  would  but  spare  him  and  his  family.  He  was  holding 
his  three-year-old  son  in  his  arms.  The  brutes,  knowing 
that  they  were  sure  of  his  wealth,  killed  the  boy  first  in  order 
to  get  at  the  old  man.  Both  were  murdered  before  the  eyes 
of  the  wife  and  the  other  children.  In  Erzerum  the  crowd 
enjoyed  itself  killing  a  man's  sons  on  the  corpse  of  their 
father,  whom  it  had  slain  by  chopping  off  piece  after  piece  of 
his  body  and  pouring  vinegar  into  the  wounds. 

In  Diarbekr  the  Kurds  surrounded  the  great  stone  church 
of  the  Jacobites  in  which  crowds  of  fugitives  had  taken 
shelter,  shot  into  it  and  broke  open  the  roof,  throwing  in 
fuel  and  burning  torches  until  they  succeeded  in  bursting  the 
doors  open.  With  yells  of  joy  from  the  populace  those  within 
the  church  were  hunted  out  into  the  open  to  be  met  by  a 
storm  of  bullets.  Pastor  Yinyis  Khathershian,  who  had  come 
from  Egypt  to  visit  his  relatives,  being  recognized  as  a  clergy- 


142     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

man,  was  thrown  down  and  beaten  with  cudgels  till  he  was 
well-nigh  insensible.  One  of  the  sacred  books  lying  about 
was  stuffed  into  his  mouth  and  he  was  mockingly  requested 
to  preach  a  sermon.  Then  burning  torches  were  thrown 
upon  him,  and  when  the  acute  pain  roused  him  from  his 
state  of  insensibility  and  he  tried  to  creep  away,  he  was  seized 
and  thrown  into  the  flames. 

Shops  and  houses,  villages  and  fields  belonging  to  Arme- 
nians were  plundered  with  a  thoroughness  which  left  nothing 
behind.  Not  a  rag  of  cloth,  nor  a  pot  nor  a  plate  remained. 
Even  the  doors  and  windows  were  wrenched  off  and  carried 
away.  What  was  not  worth  taking  was  broken  to  pieces 
and  destroyed.  "  "We  have  been  robbed  of  everything,"  says 
one  report ;  "  they  have  not  left  us  a  rag  wherewith  to  wipe 
away  our  tears." 

That  the  local  and  provincial  authorities  had  a  share  in 
these  horrors  is  beyond  question.  Sometimes  they  led  the 
soldiers  and  the  mob  in  person,  more  frequently  they  simply 
looked  on.  In  very  rare  cases,  as  at  Mush,  they  forbade  the 
massacres  and  were  obeyed.  The  only  doubtful  question 
is  what  share  of  blame  attaches  to  Abdul  Hamid  himself,  and, 
as  the  official  correspondence  between  the  local  authorities 
and  the  Porte  was  secret,  this  question  can  never  be  definitely 
answered.  It  is  certain  that  the  authorities  as  well  as  the 
people  were  convinced  that  the  Sultan  approved  of  the 
massacres,  or  even  that  he  had  given  special  orders.  It  is 
also  certain  that  some  of  the  most  abominable  evil-doers  were 
rewarded  with  orders  and  promotions.  Eradication  of  Chris- 
tianity was  an  essential  part  of  the  Sultan's  policy,  and  the 
massacres  may  well  have  been  his  reply  to  England's  attempt 
to  press  reforms  on  him.  Even  a  statesman  like  Gladstone 
did  not  hesitate  openly  to  call  the  Sultan  "  the  Great 
Assassin,"  who  had  exhausted  every  method  of  well-planned 
and  thoroughly  executed  cruelty  in  Armenia.  (Open  letter 
to  the  Duke  of  Westminster.)  Taking  everything  into  con- 
sideration, it  is  hardly  probable  that  the  Sultan,  as  Hep  worth 
suggests,   had  known  nothing    of    most    of  the  massacres 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       143 

beforehand,  and  that  he  had  been  purposely  supplied  with 
false  information  (Hepworth,  "  Through  Armenia,"  pp.  169ff.). 

According  to  carefully  prepared  statistics,  88,243  Armenians, 
of  whom  about  10,000  were  Protestants,  were  murdered,  and 
more  than  500,000  robbed  of  all  they  possessed  ;  2,493  villages 
and  towns  were  plundered ;  568  churches,  of  which  fifty  were 
Protestant,  were  pillaged  and  destroyed,  and  282  others  were 
turned  into  mosques.  It  was  characteristic  that  in  many 
places  the  victims  were  offered  the  choice  between  death  and 
Muhammadanism.  It  was  only  necessary  to  repeat  the  Muham- 
madan  Khalima  (La  illah,  etc.),  with  the  knife  already  at  their 
throats,  or  to  lift  a  finger  as  a  sign  of  assent,  and  they  were 
spared.  They  thus  became  the  brethren  of  their  enemies, 
and,  if  possible,  the  new  bond  was  sealed  by  the  marriage  of 
a  convert  with  a  Muhammadan.  The  massacres  were  not  due 
to  a  question  of  race  but  to  one  of  religion.  Christianity  was 
the  enemy.  Who  shall  blame  them,  if,  harassed  and 
threatened  with  death,  no  fewer  than  646  villages  and  even 
fifty-five  priests  joined  Islam  ?  It  is  true  that  terrible  pangs  of 
conscience  followed  such  apostasy  when  the  danger  was  past. 
Apostasy  from  Islam  is  punished  with  death,  and  in  their 
fanatical  fury  Muhammadans  did  not  waver  for  a  moment  in 
executing  the  "  holy  law."  Only  in  a  few  villages  were  the 
British  consuls  able  to  procure  for  Christians,  thus  converted 
by  force  to  Islam,  liberty  to  return  to  their  Church.^ 

The  heroism  of  the  Armenians,  both  Gregorians  and  Protes- 
tants, was  admirable.  "  Death  rather  than  deny  our  faith  " 
was  their  motto.  Many  died  as  Christian  martyrs.  Twenty- 
five  Protestant  ministers  and  1Y5  Gregorian  priests  were 
massacred,  often  after  unspeakable  tortures.  The  names  of 
the  murdered  members  of  the  churches  have  to  a  great  extent 
remained  unrecorded  ;  but  they  are  written  in  the  Book  of 
Life.     They  will  receive  their  reward  from  the  hand  of  Him 

^  The  most  characteristic  case  in  point  was,  perhaps,  that  of  Biredjik  on  the 
Euphrates,  where  the  entire  Christian  congregation  of  about  1,000  souls  adopted 
Islam  in  the  hour  of  danger,  but  through  British  intervention  were  permitted  to 
reembrace  Christianity, 


144     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

who  said,  "  Whosoever  shall  confess  Me  before  men,  him  will 
I  also  confess  before  My  Father,  who  is  in  heaven."  It  will 
strengthen  our  faith  to  read  the  record  of  some  of  these  wit- 
nesses, whose  names,  or  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  whose 
sufferings,  we  know. 

The  Protestant  minister  of  Sivas,  the  Eev.  Garabed 
Khalujian,  and  his  wife  had  laboured  there  for  many  years. 
On  the  12th  of  November  he  preached  with  great  power  on 
the  text :  "  Not  a  hair  of  your  head  shall  perish."  Two  days 
later  at  midday,  a  mob  of  raging  Muhammadans  rushed  in, 
plundering  and  massacring.  The  minister  and  some  of  his 
flock  took  refuge  in  an  upper  story  of  the  house,  the  door  of 
which  they  locked,  and  fell  on  their  knees  to  pray.  Towards 
evening  a  second  crowd  of  Muhammadans  appeared  for  the 
express  purpose  of  murdering  them  all.  The  minister  ap- 
proached them  calmly,  so  that  they  were  taken  aback  and 
offered  him  life  and  freedom  if  he  would  but  deny  his  faith. 
His  mind  reverted  to  his  ailing  wife  and  his  four  unprotected 
daughters,  and  his  heart  beat  hard.  Yet  he  said :  "  I  not 
only  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  for  my  own  part,  but  have  all 
my  life  striven  to  bring  others  to  faith  in  Him."  The  reply 
came :  "  Then  you  must  die."  The  martyr  raised  his  hands 
towards  heaven  and  fell  pierced  with  two  bullets.  He  was 
buried  next  day  with  800  other  victims  in  the  yard  of  the  old 
Armenian  church. 

When  Sassun  was  attacked  in  the  summer  of  1894,  some 
sixty  young  married  women  were  locked  up  in  a  church  and 
then  handed  over  to  the  will  of  the  soldiers.  After  that  most 
of  them  were  massacred.  The  most  attractive  of  them  were 
kept  alive  for  a  while  and  were  promised  safety  if  they  would 
abjure  their  faith.  "  Why  should  we  deny  our  Lord  ?  "  they 
asked,  pointing  at  the  same  time  to  the  corpses  of  their 
murdered  husbands  and  brothers.  "  We  are  no  better  than 
they.     Kill  us  too." 

Of  another  Armenian  woman  it  is  told  that,  being  pursued 
along  with  several  other  women  by  Muhammadans,  she  took 
refuge  on  a  cliff  that  overhung  a  deep  precipice.    Turning  to 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       14_J 

her  companions,  she  cried,  "  Sisters,  you  have  now  to  decide. 
Either  you  let  yourselves  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks  and 
are  unfaithful  to  your  husbands,  or  you  follow  my  example." 
Having  said  this,  she  leaped  into  the  abyss  with  her  twelve 
months'  old  baby  in  her  arms.  One  after  another  the  others 
followed  her  example. 

In  the  prison  at  Lemal  near  Bitlis,  Azo,  a  pious  Armenian, 
was  subjected  by  Turkish  officials  to  fearful  torture,  to  compel 
him  to  swear  a  false  oath  which  meant  certain  death  to 
some  of  the  best  men  of  the  village.  He  was  bound  with  his 
arms  stretched  out  as  if  for  crucifixion.  His  teeth  were 
smashed  in  by  the  soldiers,  his  moustache  torn  out,  his  body 
branded  with  red-hot  irons.  Yet  the  pious  man  remained 
firm.  "  I  cannot  stain  my  soul  with  the  blood  of  innocent 
men.  I  am  a  Christian,"  he  cried  in  the  midst  of  the  horrible 
torture.     At  length  death  came  to  his  relief. 

In  the  monastery  at  Tadem  the  aged  Archimandrite, 
Ohannes  Papizian,  when  he  refused  to  adopt  Muhammadanism, 
had  first  his  hands  cut  off,  then  his  arms  at  the  elbows.  As 
he  still  remained  firm,  he  was  beheaded.  In  Biredjik  an  old 
man  who  refused  to  renounce  his  faith  was  thrown  on  to  the 
ground.  Live  coals  were  heaped  on  to  his  body  and  as  he 
lay  writhing  in  agony,  a  Bible  was  thrust  into  his  face  by  his 
tormentors,  who  mockingly  told  him  to  read  them  some  of 
the  promises  on  which  he  relied. 

' '  Once  a  Turk  asked  an  Armenian,  "  "Will  you  turn  Muham- 
madan?"  The  reply  was  a  confession  of  Christ.  At  once 
the  Turk  cut  out  a  piece  of  the  Christian's  arm  with  a  knife 
and  threw  it  to  the  dogs.  "  Will  you  turn  Muhammadan 
now  ?  "  The  tortured  man  refused  firmly.  The  monster  cut 
a  large  piece  out  of  the  other  arm,  throwing  that  also  to  the 
dogs.     Still  the  Armenian  remained  true  to  his  faith. 

A  certain  Hagop  Pattian  of  Marsovan,  who  had  won  the 
respect  and  affection  of  Christians  and  Muhammadans  alike 
by  his  self-sacrificing  services  during  an  epidemic  of  cholera, 
found  no  pity.  As  the  axe  was  about  to  fall  upon  his  head 
he  said,  "  Father,  forgive  them,  they  know  not  what  they 


146     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

do,"  and,  "Father,  into  Thy  hands  I  commend  my 
spirit." 

In  Itshan  a  number  of  Armenians,  who  with  their  aged 
minister  at  their  head  had  taken  refuge  in  a  church,  were 
dragged  out  one  by  one,  and  asked  separately  which  they 
loved  more,  their  lives  or  their  faith.  Fifty-two  of  them  pre- 
ferred to  die  rather  than  deny  their  Lord.  One  by  one  they 
were  shot  or  hewn  to  pieces  with  the  sword.  The  old 
Armenian  church  was  turned  into  a  mosque  and  the  Prot- 
estant church  into  a  stable. 

In  Urfa  a  mother  had  to  see  her  two  sons  attacked  by  a 
savage  band  and  given  the  choice  between  Islam  and  death. 
She  appealed  to  them  rather  to  die  than  to  deny  their  Lord. 

(c)  After  the  Massacres.  The  sufferings  of  the  Armenians 
everywhere,  but  especially  in  the  districts  of  Greater  Armenia, 
were  beyond  description.  Tillages  were  set  on  fire,  houses 
were  pillaged  and  destroyed,  even  the  clothes  were  torn  off 
the  bodies  of  the  victims.  Particularly  the  rich  and  in- 
fluential, the  priests  and  merchants,  the  heads  of  families  and 
leaders  of  the  people  were  massacred.  It  was  thought  that 
there  would  not  be  much  difficulty  in  dealing  with  the  women, 
after  the  men  had  been  put  out  of  the  way.  The  result  was 
that,  after  the  massacres,  there  remained  probably  100,000 
widows  and  orphans.  As  they  had  been  robbed  of  all,  even 
of  provisions  for  the  winter  and  of  their  cattle,  very  many 
families  were  threatened  with  death  from  famine  and  cold. 
The  persecutions  had  been  most  violent  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  year,  just  when  the  winter  was  beginning,  and  though 
Armenia  lies  far  south,  its  bleak  table-lands  and  high  moun- 
tains are  extremely  cold  and  subject  to  long  and  heavy  snow- 
falls. 

The  distress  that  followed  was  beyond  description.  We 
can  only  listen  to  what  eye-witnesses  tell  about  a  few  villages, 
and  even  here  the  misery  that  they  saw  is  too  fearful  to  record 
in  full. 

"  How  very  near  to  starvation  the  poor  people  came  may 
be  gathered  from  the  condition  of  a  village  called  Korpey, 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       147 

which  I  visited  to-day.  There  were  one  hundred  and  fifty 
houses  in  it,  of  which  only  about  fifteen  are  left  standing. 
All  the  rest  have  been  almost  entirely  destroyed.  There  are 
only  bare  walls  where  a  beautiful  village  once  stood.  The 
people  are  in  rags.  There  are  beds  in  only  twelve  of  the 
houses.  The  people  are  sleeping  on  the  floor  all  winter  with- 
out any  bedclothes.  The  trees  have  their  tops  lopped  off, 
leaving  only  the  stems.  You  find  no  sheep  nor  cattle,  and 
only  two  dogs  there.  Neither  grain  nor  any  other  victual  are 
in  the  houses.  In  some  there  may  be  a  little  bread,  but 
the  chief  food  consists  of  grass,  which  lies  in  little  bundles 
on  the  floor.  The  faces  of  the  women  and  children  is 
pinched  and  sallow.  I  asked  a  little  fellow  whether  he  had 
eaten  any  bread  that  day:  'No,  only  some  grass.'  Others 
had  pieces  of  bread  only  the  size  of  my  hand.  While  we 
were  sitting  on  the  ground  surrounded  by  most  of  the  village 
people,  some  of  the  children  were  continually  pulling  up  grass 
and  eating  it,  roots  and  all.  As  far  as  I  could  judge,  only  a 
few  days  stood  between  them  and  death  by  starvation." 

"  On  my  passing  through  a  village  lately,  all  the  inhabitants 
came  out  into  the  street,  crying,  '  We  are  hungry,  hungry, 
hungry  1 '  I  am  still  haunted  by  this  cry.  Their  fields  are 
laid  waste,  their  houses  are  in  ruins  and  there  is  no  hand 
stretched  out  to  help  them.     What  is  to  be  the  end  of  it  all  ?  " 

"  This  morning  some  villagers  came  from  Terjan,  the  centre 
of  a  group  of  villages,  asking  for  help.  Their  very  appearance 
was  their  strongest  appeal  to  our  pity.  They  had  walked  for 
eighteen  hours  over  two  snow-covered  ranges  of  hills.  One 
of  the  men,  who  had  once  been  able  to  accommodate  eighteen 
or  twenty  visitors  at  once  in  his  house,  was  in  rags  that  would 
hardly  have  clad  him  sufficiently  in  summer.  Another  man 
of  gigantic  stature  had  had  his  arms  crippled  by  the  swords 
of  the  soldiers.  The  villagers  who  had  sent  this  deputation 
were  in  want  of  everything  that  the  human  being  needs ; 
neither  mattress  nor  bedclothes  had  been  left  them,  and  all 
through  the  winter  months  they  had  slept  on  straw  and  hay. 
This  was  the  way  they  managed  at  night:  first  straw  was 


148     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

thrown  on  the  ground,  then  all  lay  down  on  it  as  closely 
packed  as  possible  except  one,  who  covered  them  over  with 
hay,  creeping  under  it  himself  at  last  as  best  he  could.  Some 
of  these  villages  had  been  pillaged  by  the  Kurds  off  and  on  for 
forty  days." 

"  After  the  massacre  in  Malatiye  all  the  Armenians  who 
were  left  had  fled  from  their  burning  homes  to  save  their  lives, 
taking  with  them  nothing  but  the  poor  clothes  that  they  were 
wearing.  Of  all  the  2,000  plundered  families,  representing 
8,000  souls,  only  fifty  are  living  and  these  in  the  deepest 
despair.  Delicate  women  whose  husbands  and  grown-up  sons 
have  been  massacred,  and  whose  houses  have  been  burned 
down,  have  been  robbed  of  everything  and  now  live  in  huts 
or  damp  cellars.  The  once  rich  are  now  in  rags  and  have  no 
food.  Many  of  them  have  to  go  a-begging  from  door  to  door 
or  stand  in  the  market-places  clamouring]f  or  alms.  There,  sit- 
ting in  their  shops,  the  men,  who  have  made  them  widows  and 
robbed  them  of  all  their  possessions,  may  throw  them  a  hand- 
ful of  copper  coins  while  they  mock  them  for  trying  to  pick  up 
some  scraps  like  the  dogs." 

"  A  short  time  ago  I  was  visiting  in  Gurun,  and  found  the 
condition  of  the  people  indescribable.  Once  a  charming  and 
flourishing  place,  it  is  now,  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  a 
blackened  waste,  a  picture  of  utter  misery.  The  shattered 
walls  of  from  fifteen  to  sixteen  hundred  houses  that  once  nes- 
tled in  well-kept  orchards,  are  the  only  memorials  left  of  de- 
parted happiness  and  wealth.  Going  from  one  ruin  to  another 
I  heard  only  the  piercing  cry  of  woe  from  the  lips  of  women 
who  had  lost  their  all.  The  surviving  inhabitants  were  con- 
fined as  in  pens,  sometimes  packed  together  in  one  room, 
which  was  all  that  was  left  of  a  once  respectable  dwelling. 
The  miserable  people  were  clad  in  rags  fastened  round  their 
waists  with  ropes,  and  hardly  covering  their  nakedness. 
Mothers  implored  me  to  help  them  get  their  captive  daughters 
back.  A  more  heartrending  scene  than  that  which  I  beheld 
it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine." 

The  knowledge  of  all  this  misery  made  the  appeal  for  help 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       149 

to  Christians  the  world  over  irresistible.  England  had  ere 
this  shown  much  sympathy  with  the  Armenians,  and  it  was 
remembered  that  in  1878  she  had  solemnly  undertaken  the 
duty  of  protecting  this  unfortunate  people.  Now  she  was 
doubly  bound  to  act  the  part  of  the  Good  Samaritan.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  Anglo-American  Association  which  had  been  led 
since  1870  by  the  ex-Cabinet  Minister,  James  Bryce,  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  secure  political  protection  for  the  Armenians,  the 
Duke  of  Westminster,  the  church  historian  J.  Kendel  Harris, 
Lady  Somerset  and  other  prominent  members  of  society 
formed  now  an  association,  called  the  "  Friends  of  Armenia," 
to  organize  the  relief  work. 

In  France  there  had  been  little  official  sympathy  with  Ar- 
menia, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  for  a  long  time  this  country 
had  assumed  the  right  of  protecting  Koman  missions  in  the 
East  and  their  congregations ;  but  now  the  glowing  words  of 
Pere  Charmetant  roused  great  enthusiasm  for  the  work  of  re- 
lief. In  Germany  the  leading  statesmen,  bound  as  they  were 
by  their  pro-Turkish  policy,  could  not  be  persuaded  to  inter- 
fere. But  the  Rev.  Dr.  Lepsius  succeeded  in  rousing  the  feel- 
ings of  Christians  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  in  infusing 
new  enthusiasm  for  the  work  of  Christian  charity  into  societies 
that  were  working  in  the  N'ear  East.  Such  societies  were  the 
Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses'  Homes,  the  Syrian  Orphanage  in 
Jerusalem  and  the  Jerusalem  Union.  Even  in  Russia  pity 
and  charity  asserted  themselves,  though  chiefly  among  the 
Russian  Armenians  in  Transcaucasia.  The  Czar  ordered  a 
general  collection  which  brought  in  50,000  roubles.  The 
greatest  zeal  was  displayed  in  the  United  States.  Here 
Christian  circles  had,  since  the  beginning  of  the  century,  been 
deeply  interested  in  the  missions  in  Armenia.  From  all  these 
sources  there  was  collected  by  the  autumn  of  1897  a  relief  fund 
of  £300,000. 

Every  kind  of  help  was  needed.  First  of  all  the  most  desti- 
tute sufferers  must  be  helped  through  the  winter.  True,  the 
Turkish  officials  gave  intermittent  aid  after  the  massacres, 
sometimes,  however,  with  stipulations  that  were  dishonouring 


1 50     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

to  women.  Even  such  aid  used  to  cease  after  two  or  three 
weeks,  and  thereafter  they  did  but  put  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  others  who  wished  to  help.  It  was  fortunate  that  the  Amer- 
ican Board  stations  were  distributed  over  the  whole  of  the 
area  affected,  for  they  served  as  centres  for  the  relief  work. 
Even  from  such  strategically  situated  stations  as  Van,  Bitlis 
and  Mush  it  was  extremely  difficult  to  get  access  to  the  most 
desolated  and  needy  districts,  accessible  during  the  hungry 
winter  months  only  by  snow-covered  passes  and  almost  impas- 
sable mountain  gorges.  The  absence  of  suitable  roads,  com- 
bined with  heavy  snow-storms,  rendered  it  often  quite  impos- 
sible to  convey  grain  and  other  provisions  to  the  desolate 
villages. 

The  next  thing  to  be  done  was  to  provide  the  destitute  with 
the  means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  There  were  men  who,  be- 
sides having  been  robbed  of  their  goods,  had  had  their  eyes 
bored  out,  or  their  arms  hewn  off,  in  order  to  make  them  in- 
capable of  supporting  themselves.  In  still  greater  numbers 
widows  and  orphans  were  wandering  from  house  to  house, 
poor  as  beggars,  and  unable  to  earn  anything.  Urfa  particu- 
larly became  a  centre  of  the  industries  established  to  meet  the 
emergency.  Miss  Corinna  Shattuck,  an  American  missionary, 
established  an  extensive  weaving  industry  and  opened  a  large 
room  for  needlework.  Dr.  Lepsius'  society  began  and  fully 
equipped  a  carpet-making  business  on  a  large  scale. 

Above  all  there  were  thousands  of  orphans  to  be  gathered 
together,  fed  and  educated.  Orphanages  opened  their  doors 
wide  for  the  reception  of  crowds  of  Armenian  orphans  in  the 
whole  of  Turkey  from  the  Eussian  boundary  to  Persia,  Bul- 
garia and  Palestine.  The  Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses'  Homes 
in  Syria  and  Palestine  took  200,  and  the  Syrian  Orphanage  in 
Jerusalem  100.  New  orphanages  were  founded  in  great  num- 
bers. In  this  work  the  German  societies  particularly  ex- 
celled. Eev.  J.  Lohmann's  Armenian  Aid  Society  received 
1,357  orphans  from  all  parts  into  their  numerous  orphanages. 
Dr.  Lepsius'  German  Aid  Association  for  Armenia  founded  in 
Urfa,  Khoi  and  Urmia  orphanages  for  650  children.    Professor 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       151 

Godet,  who  presided  over  the  Swiss  Aid  Association,  received 
600  orphans,  300  of  them  in  his  large  institutions  in  and  near 
Sivas.  Nor  were  the  English  and  Americans  behindhand  in 
this  work.  Towards  the  end  of  1898  there  were  about  6,000 
Armenian  children  being  cared  for  in  Protestant  orphanages. 

All  this  meant  difficult  work.  First  of  all  the  children,  who 
had  been  reduced  to  a  sad  state  by  famine,  cold,  and  neglect, 
must  be  patiently  nursed  back  into  physical  robustness  and 
mental  and  moral  health.  The  arrangements  to  be  made  for 
their  education  must  also  be  free  from  any  proselytizing 
tendency  which  would  estrange  them  from  their  Gregorian 
Mother-Church,  for  the  Armenian  Church  authorities  were 
jealous  and  fearful  lest  an  improper  advantage  should  be  taken 
of  the  miserable  condition  of  the  people.  On  the  other  hand 
the  Protestant  foster-parents  could  not  and  would  not  neglect 
to  train  the  children  committed  to  their  care  in  the  knowledge 
of  Bible  truth.  Another  important  problem  was  how  to  open, 
ways  for  all  these  thousands  of  poor  orphans  to  earn  an  hon- 
est livelihood  in  after  life.  Everywhere  great  stress  was  laid 
on  teaching  trades,  such  as  carpentry,  masonry  and  farming. 
"Workshops  were  attached  to  many  orphanages.  In  some 
cases  extensive  farms  were  combined  with  them. 

At  first  it  was  thought  that  about  ten  years  of  this  difficult 
and  expensive  work  would  suffice.  But  as  the  plundering  and 
the  ill  treatment  of  Armenians  continued,  especially  in  the 
eastern  mountain  districts  of  Erzerum,  Bitlis,  Van,  and  Mush, 
it  has  been  found  necessary  not  only  to  keep  the'old  orphanages 
open,  but  even  to  found  new  ones.  Nevertheless  in  1907  the 
number  of  orphans  in  Protestant  orphanages  had  been  reduced 
to  about  1,000. 

In  addition  to  this,  every  possible  endeavour  had  to  be  put 
forth,  as  far  as  the  limited  means  allowed,  to  give  the  ruined 
people  a  new  start  in  life.  Hundreds  of  wrecked  houses  were 
rebuilt,  cattle  and  oxen  were  lent  or  given,  seed-corn  was  sup- 
plied, farming  implements,  tradesmen's  tools  and  supplies  for 
shops  were  provided.  The  need  was  manifold,  but  manifold 
also  were  the  methods  of  relief. 


152     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

A  decade  has  passed  since  that  time  of  horror,  and  we  are 
in  a  position  to  judge  whether  the  Turks  have  succeeded  in 
their  attempt  to  annihilate  the  Armenian  nation.  We  are 
able  to  declare  that,  thanks  to  the  abundant  help  of  Christian 
people  and  the  astonishing  vitality  of  the  Armenians  them- 
selves, the  Turks  have  failed.  It  is  true  that  the  Turks  and 
Kurds  still  tyrannize  over  and  attempt  to  crush  the  Armenians, 
especially  in  their  original  home  in  the  eastern  portion  of 
Asia  Minor,  where  massacres  on  a  small  scale  are  reported  al- 
most every  month,  and  the  condition  of  the  villagers  is 
desperate.  But  on  the  whole  the  Armenians  have  recovered 
in  a  marvellously  short  time  from  what  then  appeared  to  be  a 
fatal  blow.  Untold  numbers  bear  the  scars  of  those  fearful 
years  upon  their  bodies  and  countenances.  Yet  could  we  but 
be  assured  that  there  will  be  no  recurrence  of  general  mas- 
sacres, we  might  safely  assert  that  they  will  recover  from  the 
after  effects  of  that  terrible  blow.  Dare  we  harbour  such  a 
hope? 

The  European  Powers  have  unfortunately  shown  that  they 
are  not  willing  to  put  themselves  to  any  further  inconvenience 
in  behalf  of  the  Armenians.  Unable  to  settle  the  matter  by 
their  interminable  diplomatic  negotiations,  they  have  left  the 
poor  people  to  their  fate.  Will  Turkey  now  pursue  her  policy 
of  extermination  ?  For  the  time  being  she  is  somewhat  taken 
aback  by  the  merciless  plainness  of  the  reports  of  consuls  and 
philanthropists  concerning  the  horrors  of  her  cruel  misdeeds. 
The  wide-spread  publicity  which  has  branded  her  with  shame 
has  touched  a  sore  spot.  Thus,  even  when  diplomacy  fails, 
the  publicity  in  which  every  part  of  the  world  to-day  lives,  is 
to  some  extent  a  source  of  safety  for  the  oppressed.  Hence 
the  rancour  of  the  Turkish  officials  against  the  well-informed 
American  missionaries  whom  they  try  to  banish,  and  their 
intrigues  against  all  Europeans  engaged  in  the  works  of  mercy. 
Yet  they  have  not  succeeded  in  preventing  Americans,  Eng- 
lishmen and  Germans  from  settling  down  in  the  most  remote 
valleys,  whence  they  send  at  once  into  the  whole  of  the 
civilized  world  reports  of  every  massacre  that  occurs.    How 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        153 

far  will  tins  protection  reach  ?  It  is,  unfortunately,  not  to  be 
hoped  that  any  change  has  taken  place  in  Abdul  Hamid's 
policy.  And  in  the  ever-increasing  Kurdish  Haraidiye  regi- 
ments sharper  weapons  are  being  forged  for  the  destruction 
of  the  Armenian  race.  It  seems  to  be  a  fundamental  convic- 
tion of  the  Porte  that  the  Armenians  are  a  serious  danger  to 
Turkey  at  her  weakest  point,  namely,  that  part  of  the  Asiatic 
territory  which  lies  near  the  Russian  border.  They  are  a  dan- 
ger both  on  account  of  their  unwarlike  character,  on  account 
of  their  kinship  with  the  Armenians  in  Russian  Transcaucasia, 
and  on  account  of  their  religious  ties  with  the  Russians. 
Against  Turkey's  formidable  foe,  Russia,  a  defense  must  be 
provided  by  employing  the  warlike  Kurds,  even  as  Russia  on 
her  part  employs  the  Cossacks  for  a  like  purpose.  To  win 
favour  with  the  Kurds  and  to  arm  them,  to  render  the 
Armenians  powerless  or  even  to  exterminate  them — this  seems 
to  be  the  terrible  policy  of  the  Porte. 


This  section  was  written  before  the  24th  of  July,  1908,  when 
the  Turkish  constitution  was  granted.  The  change  of  policy 
which  then  occurred  will  naturally  affect  the  situation  of  the 
Armenians  deeply.  The  new  era  in  Turkey  we  shall  discuss 
in  section  seven  of  this  chapter. 

Jp.  Russian  Armenia 
It  is  to  be  deplored  that  for  the  other  half  of  the  Armenians, 
who  live  in  Russian  territory,  the  outlook  has  become  more 
and  more  gloomy  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  (cf.  8on- 
nenaufgang,  1896,  pp.  139,  156,  169,  187).  For  the  seventy- 
five  years  following  Russia's  annexation  of  Transcaucasia  in 
1800,  the  Armenian  Church  had  trustfully  accepted  Russian 
protection.  Armenians  had  entered  the  Russian  army,  sup- 
plying it  with  several  distinguished  generals,  among  whom 
may  be  mentioned  Loris  Melikoff,  Lassareff,  and  Per.  GankasoflP, 
and  had  proved  themselves  to  be  thoroughly  loyal  subjects  in 
the  midst  of  the  restless  and  unreliable  elements  of  Trans- 
caucasia.   Thus  protected  they  made  great  progress  in  com- 


1 54     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

merce  and  learning,  their  schools  were  flourishing,  their  trade 
grew  by  leaps  and  bounds.  *; 

But  in  1880,  under  the  dreadful  influence  of  the  mighty 
Pobedonoszeff,  a  determined  policy  of  Kussianizing  subject 
peoples  was  inaugurated,  in  the  hope  of  strengthening  Holy 
Russia  by  the  suppression  of  all  foreign  languages  and  civiliza- 
tions. Just  as  this  short-sighted  policy  of  unification  has 
wrought  untold  mischief  in  the  German  provinces  on  the 
Baltic  Sea,  in  Finland  and  in  Poland,  it  has  also  caused  con- 
fusion in  Transcaucasia.  Prince  Dondukoff  struck  the  first 
blow  in  1885  by  abruptly  closing  500  Armenian  schools,  thus 
depriving  30,000  children  of  education.  A  further  step  was 
taken  when  the  order  went  forth  that  all  school  property 
should  be  turned  over  to  the  government.  This  demand, 
however,  met  with  determined  passive  resistance.  The 
Armenians  went  _to  the  law  courts  in  the  case  of  every  school, 
and  their  legal  rights  were  mostly  so  plain  that  the  courts 
could  not  but  decide  in  their  favour.  Then  it  was  ordered 
that  even  the  name  "  Armenia "  was  to  be  blotted  out. 
Armenia  had  no  longer  the  right  of  national  existence. 

Armenian  newspapers  were  suppressed.  Armenians  who 
ventured  to  send  support  to  their  unfortunate  kinsmen  in 
Turkey  were  declared  rebels  and  were  banished. 

The  final  blow  fell  on  the  12th  of  June,  1903.  The  govern- 
ment commanded  the  Armenian  Church  to  deliver  up  its  entire 
property  to  the  Russian  State.  This  command  fell  like  a 
bomb  into  a  barrel  of  gunpowder.  Not  a  single  church  nor 
monastery  would  deliver  up  its  property.  Doors,  chests  and 
locks  had  to  be  burst  open.  Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that, 
when  the  Armenians  saw  sacrilegious  hands  laid  on  their 
sanctuary,  the  Church,  they  flew  to  arms  in  her  defense'? 
Bloodshed  soon  followed.  In  a  short  time  the  whole  of  Rus- 
sian Armenia  was  in  rebellion.  It  was  then  that  Russia  com- 
mitted an  unpardonable  act. 

We  have  seen  how,  after  the  Berlin  Congress  of  1878,  the 
Armenians  in  Turkey  hoped  in  some  measure  for  the  establish- 
ment of  a  principality  in  Armenia,  which  should  be  wholly  or 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       155 

partially  autonomous.  The  Kussian  Armenians  naturally 
sympathized  with  this  idea.  Such  sympathy  the  Russian 
government  regarded  as  treason  and  rebellion.  The  Arme- 
nians must  be  taught  a  severe  lesson.  The  wild  hordes  of 
Tartars  in  Cis-  and  Transcaucasia  should  be  their  teachers. 
Like  the  Kurds  in  Turkey,  the  Tartars  fell  upon  the  Arme- 
nians in  Russia.  In  their  first  attack,  which  took  place  in 
Baku,  they  murdered  two  hundred  Armenians,  men,  women 
and  children ;  in  Shusha  they  threatened  ruin  to  the  strong 
Armenian  colony  and  cut  off  its  supplies.  But  the  Armenians 
defended  themselves  and  even  attacked  some  Tartar  villages. 
The  rebellion  which  burst  forth  in  every  part  of  Russia  after 
the  unsuccessful  war  with  Japan  helped  to  fan  the  flame  in 
Transcaucasia.  There  was  hopeless  confusion.  Order  was 
restored  but  slowly.  In  August,  1906,  the  government  re- 
pealed the  foolish  law  of  confiscation  and  restored  to  the 
Armenian  churches  such  property  as  had  already  been  seized. 
But  it  is  not  easy  to  regain  the  confidence  of  the  Armenians, 
once  so  fearfully  betrayed. 

5.  The  Worh  of  the  A7nerican  Board  from  1896-1907^ 
The  massacres  dealt  to  the  Board's  mission  a  blow  which 
seemed  for  a  time  likely  to  prove  fatal.  Nearly  all  the  sta- 
tions in  Eastern  Turkey  had  suffered  heavily.  The  costly 
college  buildings  in  Aintab  had  been  plundered  and  burned. 
Hundreds  of  churches  and  schools  in  town  and  country  had 
been  destroyed,  the  congregations  scattered,  and  the  pastors 
and  teachers  either  killed  or  crippled.  It  was  as  if  a  destruc- 
tive hail-storm  had  passed  over  a  field  of  ripe  grain.  To  repair 
the  damage  and  to  reorganize  the  work  was  a  gigantic  task, 
rendered  the  more  diflacult  by  the  enmity  and  suspicion  of  the 
Turkish  government,  which  placed  every  possible  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  the  mission.  ISTo  firman  could  be  secured  granting 
permission  to  rebuild  the  ruined  houses  or  even  to  execute  the 
most  necessary  repairs.  The  members  of  the  congregations 
were  not  allowed  to  go  to  church  nor  send  their  children  to 

* "  Missions  of  the  American  Board  in  Asiatic  Turkey. ' '  Office  of  the  Board,  1904. 


]  56     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

school.  Happily  the  American  government  was  at  the  back 
of  the  Board  and  extended  its  powerful  protection  to  its  un- 
justly distrusted  subjects.  After  weary  and  interminable 
negotiations,  which  lasted  five  years,  the  Turkish  government 
was  induced  to  pay  nearly  T  £20,000  in  compensation  for  the 
schools  destroyed  in  Aintab  and  Kharput,  and  to  issue  the 
requisite  firmans  for  their  reconstruction.  American  energy 
was  now  displayed  in  restoring  the  mission,  so  that  by  1900 
all  traces  of  the  disaster  were  wiped  out  in  most  of  the  sta- 
tions, and  the  work  was  again  well  under  way.  The  educa- 
tion of  thousands  of  orphans  has  been  one  of  the  main  under- 
takings during  the  last  decade,  the  Board  having  borne  the 
chief  burden  of  establishing  orphanages.  During  the  time  of 
greatest  distress  it  had  over  3,000  children  under  its  care. 
Orphanages  were  opened  in  all  the  stations,  the  largest  being 
in  Kharput,  Aintab,  Urfa,  and  Van.  In  these  orphanages  no 
effort  was  made  unduly  to  influence  the  children  to  become 
Protestants.  They  were  permitted  to  attend  the  Gregorian 
services,  being  even  conducted  thither.  The  Gregorian  bish- 
ops were  permitted  to  appoint  priests  to  call  on  the  children 
belonging  to  their  Church,  and  to  strengthen  their  attachment 
to  it.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that,  if  one  may  judge  from  the 
fact  that  the  number  of  the  members  of  the  Protestant 
Churches,  which  was  but  temporarily  and  to  a  slight  degree 
affected  by  the  massacre  of  1895,  has  since  that  time  shown 
no  striking  increase,  a  large  majority  of  the  6,000  orphans, 
trained  in  Protestant  orphanages,  must  have  returned  to  their 
old  Church. 

Two  branches  of  the  work  came  more  and  more  to  the  fore. 
Higher  education  ^  is  conducted  with  admirable  energy.  The 
Armenian  people,  deprived  of  the  means  of  existence  by  the 
tyranny  of  the  Turks,  have  thronged  to  the  schools,  till  these 
are  full  to  overflowing.  From  year  to  year  it  becomes  more 
difficult  to  meet  the  applications  for  admission.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  these  schools  that  education  for  girls  is  on  almost 

^  "  The  Higher  Educational  Institutions  of  the  American  Board."  "Sivaa 
Normal  School."     (Two  very  interesting  booklets.) 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       157 

as  high  a  level  as  that  for  young  men.  We  give  a  list  of  the 
colleges. 

The  Robert  College  in  Bebek  near  Constantinople  is  an  in- 
dependent institution  for  Western  Turkey.  Then  there  is  the 
Anatolia  College  in  Marsovan.  In  April,  1903,  the  institution 
founded  in  Smyrna  in  1891  was  incorporated  as  "  The  Inter- 
national College."  In  Scutari,  near  Constantinople,  there  is 
a  college  for  girls  of  well-to-do  families.* 

In  Central  Turkey  the  principal  institutions  are  wisely 
divided  between  Aintab  and  Marash  ;  in  the  former  is  the 
Central  Turkey  College  for  boys,  in  the  latter  the  college  for 
girls.  The  St.  Paul's  College  for  young  men  in  Tarsus  in 
Cilicia,  founded  in  1888  by  the  liberality  of  Col.  "W.  Shepard 
of  New  York,  passed  in  1904  into  the  hands  of  the  Board,  and 
a  similar  institution  for  girls  is  planned  in  Adana,  the  capital 
of  that  province. 

In  Eastern  Turkey  the  higher  schools  for  the  two  sexes  are 
united  in  Kharput.  Here  the  Euphrates  College  with  more 
than  1,100  students  is  a  complex  of  primary  schools,  secondary 
schools  and  colleges  for  both  sexes,  and  of  institutions  for 
ministers  and  female  teachers. 

In  addition  there  are  in  Asia  no  fewer  than  forty -one  board- 
ing- and  high-schools,  some  for  boys,  some  for  girls,  not  to 
mention  312  primary  and  village  schools,  attended  by  16,191 
boys  and  girls.     The  Board  teaches  altogether  20,861  children. 

The  other  branch  of  missionary  work  to  which  peculiar 
attention  has  been  given  is  the  Medical  Mission.  Gradually 
all  the  chief  stations  in  Turkey  are  being  provided  with  med- 
ical missionaries  and  hospitals.  The  older  hospitals  are  those 
in  Aintab,  C^esarea,  Mardin  and  Yan.  Latterly  others  have 
been  added,  in  Constantinople  (Dr.  Codrington's  hospital  with 
a  nurses'  training  institution),  Marsovan,  Sivas,  and  Kharput. 
An  Armenian  now  living  in  America  has  provided  the  funds 
for  building  a  mission  hospital  in  Diarbekr,     The  mission 

*  Since  the  site  on  the  other  side  of  the  Bosphorus  did  not  suit  the  purposes  of 
the  college,  it  is  to  be  removed  this  year  or  next  to  the  European  side,  to  Ar- 
noutkoyi,  a  southern  suburb  of  Stamboul. 


158     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

plans  to  build  hospitals  in  Erzerum  and  Adana,  where  doctors 
have  already  for  some  time  been  stationed.  In  addition,  Dr. 
Lepsius'  German  Mission  in  Urfa  and  Diarbekr,  and  the 
Lohmann  Society  in  Marash  and  Mesereh,  have  their  doctors 
and  hospitals.  The  growth  of  the  medical  work  has  been  due 
partly  to  the  great  amount  of  sickness  prevailing  amongst  a 
people  destitute  of  all  medical  attention,  and  partly  to  the 
hope  that  this  practical  evidence  of  Christian  philanthropy 
may  touch  the  hearts  of  the  Turks.  In  the  vilayet  of  Sivas, 
where  there  is  a  population  of  750,000,  there  are  only  about 
fifteen  doctors  with  diplomas,  and  all  of  these  live  in  the 
towns,  so  that  country  people  have  to  travel  for  many  hours, 
sometimes  for  days,  in  order  to  see  a  doctor,  if  even  then  they 
can  afford  to  pay  the  very  high  fees.  Thus  there  is  an  almost 
boundless  field  for  the  beneficent  labours  of  medical  mission- 
aries. They  have  formed  the  "  Asia  Minor  Medical  Missionary 
Association"  among  themselves  for  mutual  consultation. 
They  met  for  their  first  conference  in  1907. 

The  relations  of  the  mission  to  the  Gregorian  Church  are 
subject  to  much  fluctuation.  There  are  those  who  place  the 
Armenian  religion  on  much  the  same  level  as  the  heathenism 
of  India  and  wrongly  conclude  that  "  these  people  are  in  as 
great  need  of  the  Gospel  as  the  fetish  worshippers  of  Africa 
or  the  savages  of  the  South  Sea  Islands."  The  repeated 
declarations  that  members  of  the  old  Church  can  become 
"  Christians  "  only  by  adopting  Protestantism  are,  at  the  very 
least,  open  to  criticism.  And  the  prevalent  feeling  among 
the  missionaries  is  that  there  must  be  no  proselytizing.  The 
great  task  is  as  far  as  possible  to  rouse  to  new  spiritual  life 
the  dead  Church.  Accordingly,  if  the  mission  can  but  win 
the  confidence  of  the  members  of  that  Church,  if  it  can  but 
gain  an  open  ear  for  its  Gospel  message,  it  is  no  cause  of  grief 
that  the  number  of  accessions  to  the  Protestant  Church  is 
decreasing.  There  are,  happily,  proofs  that  the  confidence  of 
the  ancient  Church  is  being  increasingly  won.  In  Urfa,  some 
years  after  the  massacres,  the  Gregorians  and  Protestants 
united  in  educational  work.    Missionaries  and  other  Prot- 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       159 

estant  ministers  are  frequently  requested  to  preach  in  Gre- 
gorian churches.  In  the  neighbourhood  of  Yan  and  Bitlis, 
where  the  distress  was  particularly  severe,  and  most  effectual 
and  self-sacrificing  help  was  afforded,  there  appears  to  be  a 
growing  feeling  of  mutual  confidence  between  the  two 
Churches.  In  Yan  the  Protestants  even  seriously  considered 
whether  they  should  not  return  in  a  body  to  the  Gregorian 
Church.  The  majority  were,  however,  opposed  to  such  a  step 
(Annual  Keport  of  the  Board,  1907,  p.  80),  the  time  for  such 
a  reunion  being,  in  their  opinion,  not  yet  come. 

Even  in  places  where  the  Gregorian  clergy  stand  aloof,  be- 
cause they  are  concerned  about  their  loss  of  influence,  there 
are  Protestant  tendencies  at  work.  Thus  the  Gregorians  ex- 
ert themselves  assiduously  to  raise  the  status  of  their  schools. 
This  may  be  attributed  to  the  desire  to  keep  the  Gregorian 
pupils  out  of  the  Protestant  schools  by  making  their  own 
schools  equal  to,  or  even  better  than,  those  of  the  mission.  Yet, 
though  the  missionaries  may  be  right  in  thinking  that  the  Ar- 
menian schools  would  soon  be  closed  were  it  not  for  the  com- 
petition of  the  Protestant  institutions,  the  fact  remains  that 
there  is  real  vitality  in  them.  There  are  other  vestiges  of 
this  new  life  in  the  Gregorian  Church.  In  Aintab  the  Gre- 
gorians have  begun  Bible  classes  on  Sunday,  and  these  classes, 
which  meet  in  the  Protestant  school,  are  attended  by  1,000 
people  of  the  old  faith.  The  Armenian  emigrants  in  North 
America  subscribe  liberally  to  the  work  of  the  Board  with 
full  confidence.  One  of  them,  Asian  Sahagian,  made  a  dona- 
tion of  £15,000  to  a  fund  for  extending  the  educational  system, 
another  bequeathed  a  sum  of  money  to  build  a  hospital  in 
Diarbekr,  others  again  subscribed  the  salary  of  an  American 
professor  in  the  Euphrates  College  at  Kharput,  paid  for  a 
gymnasium  in  that  college  and  built  a  school  for  girls  in  Arab- 
kir. 

So  the  mission  is  in  a  position  of  growing  influence  and 
strength.  Unhappily  the  prospects  of  the  Armenian  nation 
are  dark  and  gloomy.  In  the  Eastern  provinces,  in  the  vilayets 
of  Yan,  Bitlis,  Diarbekr  and  Erzerum  the  conditions  are  well- 


i6o     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

nigh  desperate.  Robbery  and  even  open  murder  are  of  such 
common  occurrence  that  they  are  hardly  noticed.  In  remote 
villages  the  Armenians  have  no  security  of  life  or  property. 
Ruthless  taxation,  aggravated  by  the  extortion  of  the  tax- 
gatherers,  is  the  last  straw.  This  provokes  rebellion,  the  chief 
centre  of  which  is  in  Van.  The  revolutionaries  are  gaining 
more  and  more  recruits.  It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  all  who 
can,  emigrate.  The  peasants  flee  in  crowds  across  the  bound- 
ary into  Russia,  at  the  risk  of  their  lives.  Tradesmen  of  all 
kinds  resort  to  the  various  seaports  of  Asia  Minor.  People 
who  have  been  educated  in  the  American  schools  like  to  emi- 
grate to  the  United  States.  This  is  a  great  drawback  for  the 
mission.  From  a  single  college  forty-four  theological  students 
went  thither,  only  four  of  them  returning  home  for  lasting 
service  in  Armenia.  In  some  districts  it  is  no  longer  possible 
to  supply  the  schools  with  teachers  nor  the  pulpits  with  min- 
isters. Generally  speaking,  it  is  the  strong  who  emigrate, 
leaving  the  weak  old  men  and  children  in  all  the  greater  dis- 
tress, women  being  compelled  to  struggle  with  the  stony  fields 
to  produce  food.  The  increasingly  impoverished  congregations 
can  no  longer  raise  the  salaries  for  teachers  and  ministers. 
Thus  the  process  of  self-support  is  arrested.  All  this  is  further 
complicated  by  the  fact  that  the  Board  finds  it  extremely  dif- 
ficult to  obtain  sufiicient  means  for  its  fast  extending  work. 

According  to  the  statistics  of  1908  there  are  in  connection 
with  the  American  Board  twenty  stations  and  269  out-stations, 
forty-two  ordained  missionaries,  twelve  medical  missionaries, 
and  sixty-eight  lady  missionaries,  ninety-two  ordained,  and 
102  lay  preachers,  and  728  teachers.  There  are  130  fully  or- 
ganized congregations,  with  15,748  communicants  and  41,802 
adherents;  eight  colleges,  forty-one  boarding  and  high 
schools,  312  elementary  and  village  schools,  with  altogether 
20,861  pupils.  In  nearly  all  these  items  there  is  a  falling  off 
as  compared  with  1907,  and  there  again  as  compared  with 
1906. 

The  Swiss  Aid  Association  was  from  the  beginning  so  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  Board  that  its  work  is  really  a  part 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       161 

of  the  Board's  mission.  The  two  German  societies  have  main- 
tained their  independence  in  a  greater  degree.  The  Lohmann 
Society,  still  active  in  orphanage  work,  has,  with  increasing 
interest,  taken  part  with  the  Board  in  evangelistic  work.  In 
addition  to  its  hospitals  in  Marash  and  Mesereh  (Kharput),  it 
has  taken  over  in  the  latter  districts,  and  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Van,  a  part  of  the  congregations  and  schools  of  the 
Board.  The  Lepsius  Society,  following  the  original  plans  of 
its  founder,  was  transformed  on  the  11th  of  May,  1900,  into 
the  German  Orient  Mission.  It  has  medical  missionaries  and 
hospitals  in  Urfa  and  Diarbekr,  also  a  missionary  in  Souch- 
bulak,  a  town  in  Northwestern  Persia.  The  latter  is  to  learu 
the  language  of  the  Kurds  and  to  do  literary  work,  including 
the  translating  of  the  New  Testament,  in  order  to  be  able  to  be- 
gin full  missionary  work  among  the  Muhammadan  Kurds. 
The  society  has  obtained  the  service  of  Johannes  Awetaranian, 
a  remarkable  convert  from  Islam. 

Johannes  Awetaranian  (v.  ^'■Joh.  Awetaranian,  Gesehichte 
eines  Mohainmedaners,  der  Christ  wurde^''  Berlin,  1905),  orig- 
inally called,  while  still  a  Muhammadan,  Muhammad  Shukri, 
was  born  on  the  30th  of  June,  1861,  in  Eastern  Turkey,  of  fanat- 
ical Muhammadan  parents,  and  was  brought  up  in  all  the  observ- 
ances of  the  strictest  Islam  by  his  father,  a  dervish  of  the  Bek- 
tashi  order.  The  reading  of  the  Gospels  wrought  faith  in  him. 
He  fled  into  Transcaucasia,  and,  after  many  disappointments, 
was  baptized  in  Tiflis.  By  the  help  of  Christian  friends  he 
received  a  good  education  in  a  mission  house  in  Stockholm, 
after  which  he  returned  to  Transcaucasia  as  a  preacher.  But 
he  soon  entered  the  service  of  the  Swedish  Evangelical  Na- 
tional Society  as  a  missionary  to  the  Muhamraadans  in  Kash- 
gar  in  Turkestan,  where  he  spent  five  years  in  translating  the 
New  Testament  into  the  classic  Kashgar  Turkish  spoken  there. 
His  translation  is  now  being  printed.  Eeturning  to  Europe 
he  joined  the  German  Orient  Mission,  becoming  by  his  wri- 
tings a  zealous  pioneer  of  the  Muhammadan  Mission  in  Bul- 
garia. 

We  will  here  enumerate  some  smaller  missions  hitherto  left 


i62     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

unmentioned.  In  18M  a  society  called  "  The  German  Evan- 
gelical Benevolent  Society  "  ("  evangelisch-deutscher  Wohltdtig- 
keitsverein  ")  was  formed  in  Stamboul,  at  the  recommendation 
of  the  chaplain  of  the  Prussian  embassy,  the  Kev.  Mr.  Major. 
In  1852  three  Kaiserswerth  deaconesses  entered  its  service- 
When  the  sisters  removed,  in  1877,  into  the  hospital  built  by 
the  German  government,  their  work  increased.  The  number 
of  deaconesses  is,  at  present,  seventeen.  This  hospital  is  open 
to  people  of  every  nationality  ;  it  has  about  1,500  in-patients 
a  year.  In  1853  the  deaconesses,  at  the  urgent  request  of 
well-to-do  Protestants  there,  opened  in  Smyrna  a  higher  girls' 
boarding-school.  The  boarding  department,  however,  had  to 
be  given  up  in  1891,  owing  to  the  keen  competition  of  the 
Greek  Church  and  the  Jesuits,  the  institution  becoming  merely 
a  day-school.  An  orphanage  in  connection  with  it,  originally 
intended  for  Levantine  girls,  did  excellent  work  after  the 
Armenian  massacres,  admitting  120  Armenian  orphan  girls. 

The  Friends  adopted  a  small  medical  mission,  begun  by 
Miss  Burgess  in  1881  for  the  Armenian  population  in  Con- 
stantinople, two  lady  missionaries  with  two  native  assistants 
being  secured.  Connected  with  it  are  an  orphanage,  a  day- 
school,  and  a  needlework  industry,  to  provide  work  for  250 
poor  Armenian  women.  A  Miss  West  also  opened,  in  1880,  a 
Christian  refuge  and  coffee-room. 

The  American  Disciples  of  Christ  (Campbellites)  began  in 
1879  a  mission  in  Constantinople,  which  the  American  Board 
justly  regarded  as  an  intrusion  into  its  own  sphere.  It  was 
in  the  following  years  extended  to  many  stations  in  Asia 
Minor  and  ITorthern  Syria,  the  centres  being  Sivas  (1882), 
Marsovan  and  Tokat  (1883),  Aintab,  Marash,  Albistan,  Haleb 
and  Antioch.  But  there  were  never  many  Americans  in  the 
mission  and  it  has  since  been  given  up. 

In  connection  with  a  vigorous  Protestant  propaganda  pro- 
moted by  Bishop  Gobat  of  Jerusalem  in  1863,  the  Armenian 
Bishop  Megerdich,  of  Aintab,  joined  the  Anglican  Church. 
He  succeeded  in  attracting  a  good  many  members  to  his  con- 
gregation, partly  from  the  Gregorians  and  partly  from  the 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       163 

strong  and  influential  Protestant  church  of  his  town.  This 
naturally  caused  some  ill  feeling.  With  the  help  of  subscrip- 
tions from  England  a  church  building  on  a  grand  scale  was 
begun,  but  was  never  finished.  The  Anglican  congregation 
still  exists,  but  has  never  become  very  influential.  An 
Armenian  who  had  left  the  Board,  the  Kev.  H.  Jenanyan, 
after  having  enjoyed  a  theological  training  in  America, 
founded  in  1888  a  free  mission  in  Cilicia,  which  was  by  prin- 
ciple independent  of  foreign  management,  though,  unhappily, 
not  of  American  money.  It  gradually  adopted  three  stations, 
Tarsus  (1888),  Konia  and  Marash  (1889).  In  these  stations  it 
maintains  schools  for  boys  and  girls,  and  orphanages. 

Mesopotamia  has  been  somewhat  neglected  by  the  Protes- 
tant Mission,  being  rather  inaccessible  and  the  conditions 
there  being  unfavourable.  This  ancient  cradle  of  human  cul- 
ture proves  to-day,  by  the  desolation  of  its  plains  and  the  gen- 
eral insecurity  of  life  within  its  borders,  the  helplessness  of 
the  Turkish  administration.  Its  three  centres  are  Mosul, 
Bagdad  and  Basra,  towns  wrapped  in  the  glamour  of  fairy 
tale. 

"We  have  already  told  (p.  116f.)  how,  between  the  years  1841 
and  1860,  Mosul  was  repeatedly  occupied  by  the  American 
Board  to  serve  as  a  centre  for  work  among  the  Mountain 
Syrians.  After  their  final  retirement,  Protestant  missions 
were  not  represented  for  thirty  years  in  these  headquarters 
of  -the  Koman  propaganda.  In  1892  the  American  Presby- 
terians, who,  in  the  meantime,  had  taken  over  the  Nestorian 
Mission  in  Persia  from  the  American  Board,  decided  to  re- 
occupy  Mosul.  But  in  spite  of  repeated  attempts  they  did 
not  succeed  in  coming  into  close  touch  with  the  independent 
Syrians  of  the  wild  mountains,  on  account  of  the  intervening 
plain  and  hills  where  the  Roman  propaganda  was  in  full 
force.  They  therefore  handed  over  their  station  in  1900  to 
the  Church  Missionary  Society,  which  was  planning  to  estab- 
lish a  second  station  in  "  Turkish  Arabia,"  in  addition  to  their 
first  station,  Bagdad.  The  chief  work  of  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  here  was  the  medical  mission,  for  which  a 


1 64     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

hospital  was  opened.  In  addition  they  undertook  educational 
work,  in  which,  however,  they  were  much  hampered  by  the 
Turkish  authorities.  The  success  of  the  mission  was  so  small 
that,  in  1907,  the  home  committee  of  the  society,  failing  to 
obtain  sufficient  financial  support,  seriously  thought  of  aban- 
doning the  station.  But  it  now  became  evident  what  real 
appreciation  of  the  work  existed  among  the  suspicious  and 
stolid  Muhamraadans,  for  an  urgent  and  appreciative  petition 
was  sent  to  the  London  office.  The  work  is  accordingly  to 
be  continued  for  the  present. 

In  Bagdad  in  1834,  Antony  Groves,  a  rich  English  dentist, 
together  with  several  friends,  began  a  mission  among  the 
Muhammadans,  but  did  not  long  persevere  in  the  work. 
Fifty  years  later  the  Church  Missionary  Society  missionary, 
Dr.  Bruce,  at  that  time  in  Persia,  drew  attention  to  Bagdad 
and  the  holy  places  of  the  Persian  Shiites,  such  as  Nejef 
and  Kerbela,  and  showed  how  effective  preparatory  work 
could  be  done  for  the  isolated  Persian  Mission,  if  the  numerous 
Persian  pilgrims  were  provided  with  the  Bible.  The  Church 
Missionary  Society  thereupon  occupied  Bagdad  in  1882.  But 
the  pilgrims  proved  unapproachable  and  even  hostile,  so  that 
the  missionaries  stationed  in  Bagdad  turned  to  the  native 
Turko- Arabian  population,  endeavouring  to  win  their  confi- 
dence by  affording  medical  aid.  The  medical  missionary 
Dr.  H.  M.  Sutton  was  stationed  there  in  1886.  But  it  is 
stony  ground,  and  the  prospect  of  a  harvest  is  still  small. 


6.     Protestant  Missions  Among  the  Greeks ,  the 
Bulgarians,  and  the  Turks 

a)  Missions  among  the  Greeks.  We  have  already  men- 
tioned the  work  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  Malta  and 
Syra  (p.  94ff.).  In  the  years  1821  to  1829  occurred  the  romantic 
"War  of  Independence  by  which  Greece  freed  herself  from 
Turkey.  This  unequal  struggle  was  keenly  watched  by 
Europe  and  America,  the  victors  being  warmly  applauded. 
It  seemed  as  if  the  period  of  the  Persian  wars  of  olden  times 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       165 

had  returned.  It  was  hoped  that  the  new  Greece  with  all 
the  freshness  and  vigour  of  youth  would  promote  a  regenera- 
tion of  the  East.  To  bring  the  Gospel  to  this  virile  nation 
appeared  to  be  an  undertaking  full  of  promise  for  the  Muham- 
madan  East.  Bright  dreams  were  indulged  in.  Consequently 
much  zealous  work  was  undertaken  by  various  Christian 
agencies.  The  American  Board,  which  had  occupied  Smyrna 
in  1820,  removed  its  headquarters,  as  did  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  in  1822,  to  Malta,  which  seemed  to  be  the 
most  strategic  starting-point  for  the  work  on  the  eastern  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean.  Other  stations  were  soon  added, 
Athens  in  1830,  Argos  and  Cyprus  in  1834,  Scios  in  1835, 
Ariopolis,  near  the  ancient  Sparta,  in  183Y.  Other  societies 
also  appeared  on  the  field.  About  1830  Dr.  Hill  and  Dr. 
Richardson  came  to  Athens  as  representatives  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  of  America,  having  been  strictly  enjoined,  however, 
not  to  found  a  separate  Protestant  congregation.  The 
American  Baptists  followed  in  1836.  But  all  these  hopes 
were  doomed  to  disappointment.  The  ofiicial  Church  of 
Greece  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  missions.  No 
school  could  be  opened  without  the  permission  of  the  govern- 
ment. No  missionary  could  even  be  engaged  as  a  private 
tutor  in  a  family  without  official  permission.  The  sale  of  books 
was  subject  to  a  very  strict  censorship.^  In  the  schools  the 
only  religious  book  which  might  be  used  was  the  "orthodox" 
catechism,  with  its  emphasis  on  the  veneration  of  images  and 
similar  superstitious  customs.  The  missionaries  met  with 
opposition  everywhere.  Even  when  they  conducted  their 
Sunday  services  in  their  own  private  houses,  the  ecclesiastical 
authorities  often  watched  the  houses  so  that  no  Greek  could 
be  present.  Even  where  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  were 
not  so  jealous  and  intolerant  it  became  evident  that  the  Greek 
nation  was  not  ready  to  welcome  the  Gospel.     The  Orthodox 

'  The  ecclesiastical  authorities  are  so  suspicious  that  the  sale  of  the  New 
Testament  in  modern  Greek  is  forbidden  throughout  the  Kingdom  of  Greece, 
which  is  thus  the  only  country  in  the  world  in  which  the  reading  of  the  Bible 
in  the  mother-tongue  is  a  criminal  act ! 


1 66     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Greeks  are  so  intoxicated  with  pride  both  in  their  national 
history  and  in  their  ecclesiastical  tradition,  that  they  have  no 
taste  for  the  Gospel  as  offered  to  them  by  American  sects. 
Did  they  need  to  be  taught  by  upstart  Americans,  they,  in 
whose  language  Peter,  Paul,  and  John  had  written  (though  a 
Greek  of  to-day  can  hardly  understand  the  Greek  of  the  New 
Testament),  they,  the  Church  of  Athanasius,  Chrysostom  and 
John  of  Damascus  ? 

This  dislike  of  Protestantism  was  so  great  as  to  cause  one 
society  after  the  other  to  leave  Greece.  The  American  Board 
abandoned  its  stations,  merely  leaving  the  missionary,  J.  King, 
in  Athens  until  his  death  in  1889.  The  American  Episco- 
palians likewise  abandoned  theirs,  when  the  able  educationalist, 
Dr.  Hill,  died  in  1882.  The  American  Baptists  left  in  1856, 
returning  in  1871,  only  to  depart  again  in  1887.  From  1875 
to  1891  the  Southern  Presbyterians  made  an  attempt,  only  to 
be  disappointed  too.  At  the  present  day  there  are  but  a  few 
native  Methodist  and  Baptist  preachers  at  work,  the  best 
known  among  them  being  the  Methodist  pastor  Kalopothakes, 
now  in  his  eighty-seventh  year.  There  are  small  Prot- 
estant congregations  in  Athens,  Piraeus,  Patras,  Larissa  and 
Jannina. 

More  effective  was  the  work  which  the  missionaries  of  the 
American  Board  carried  on  among  the  Greeks  in  connection 
with  their  labours  among  the  Armenians  along  the  western  and 
northern  coasts  of  Asia  Minor,  and  in  connection  with  their 
labours  among  the  Bulgarians.  Here,  in  addition  to  their 
main  undertaking,  they  extended  a  hearty  welcome  to  such 
Greeks  as  showed  a  willingness  to  come  and  learn,  the  schools 
especially  proving  to  be  a  great  attraction.  The  result  was 
that  Greek-Protestant  congregations  were  formed  in  Turkey, 
in  Demirji  in  Bithynia  (1855),  and,  later,  in  Smyrna,  Ordu, 
Constantinople,  Salonica  and  other  places.  The  Board  has 
never  again  organized  an  exclusively  Greek  work. 

In  1907  a  conference  was  held  in  Constantinople,  attended 
by  representatives  of  Protestant  Greek  congregations,  who 
met  to  devise  means  for  forming  a  union  between  the  widely 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        167 

separated  and  diverse  congregations.  Four  Protestant  con- 
ference districts  were  formed,  with  Athens,  Constantinople, 
Smyrna  and  Ordu  (near  Trebizond)  as  centres. 

The  Greek  Church,  while  jealously  shutting  itself  against 
the  influences  of  American  Methodism  or  Congregationalism, 
has  shown  itself  more  ready  than  the  other  ancient  Churches 
to  respond  to  the  renovating  power  of  a  new  spiritual  life 
working  from  within.  Thus  there  were  several  revivals 
within  the  Church  in  the  nineteenth  century,  partly  of  a 
sectarian  character.  Associations  for  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel  have  been  formed  in  some  places  by  laymen,  the  oldest 
and  best  known  of  which,  the  Eusebeia,  was  founded  in 
Smyrna,  in  1893,  by  Greeks  who  had  received  education  and 
a  stimulus  to  a  more  vigorous  spiritual  life  in  the  schools  of 
the  American  Board.  This  association  has  already  2,000 
members,  and  possesses  a  fund  of  over  £1,500.  Similar 
associations  have  been  founded  in  Constantinople,  Patras, 
Athens  and  Leucosia  in  Cyprus. 

(h)  Missions  among  the  Bulgarians.  The  attention  of  the 
friends  of  Protestant  missions,  like  that  of  the  world  at  large, 
was  drawn  to  Bulgaria  with  its  religiously  and  politically 
progressive  people,  at  the  time  when  the  Bulgarian  nation, 
numbering  some  four  millions,  rose  in  revolt  against  the 
tyrannous  Greek  hierarchy  and  the  Turkish  despotism. 
Bulgaria  first  succeeded  in  winning  ecclesiastical  autonomy, 
founding  a  Bulgarian  exarchate,  and  then  gained  political 
independence,  being  recognized  as  an  autonomous  principality 
in  consequence  of  the  Kusso-Turkish  war  of  1877  and  the  subse- 
quent Berlin  Congress  in  1878. 

The  American  Board,  feeling  unable  to  undertake  the  work 
single-handed,  invited  the  cooperation  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Mission,  which,  at  that  time  (1851),  was  seriously 
considering  a  new  mission  on  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  An 
agreement  was  made  whereby  the  Methodists  were  to  occupy 
the  greater  part  of  Bulgaria  proper  between  the  Balkan 
Mountains  and  the  lower  Danube  and  the  American  Board 
the  vast  region  south  and  west  of  the  mountains.    In  1857 


i68     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

each  society  founded  its  first  station,  the  Board  occupying 
Philippopolis,  and  the  Methodists  Shumla. 

Both  of  these  missions  underwent  a  similar  development, 
and  suffered,  alas,  similar  disappointments.  In  the  troublous 
times  before  1870  great  hopes  were  entertained  that,  desiring 
to  be  freed  from  the  Greek  hierarchy  without  falling  into  the 
hands  of  Eome,  a  large  and  influential  portion  of  the  Bul- 
garians would  adopt  Protestantism.  This  hope  was  quenched 
when,  with  Russia's  help,  the  Bulgarian  exarchate  was  es- 
tablished in  1880,  all  hitherto  Greek  bishoprics  being  filled  by 
Bulgarians.  Then,  during  the  disturbances  of  1870-1878, 
which  resulted  in  the  shaking  off  of  the  Turkish  yoke  that 
had  been  borne  for  500  years,  hope  revived  that  real  entrance 
to  the  people  might  be  gained.  This  hope  proved  vain  also. 
Finally,  the  hard-won  constitution  of  1878,  which  granted 
religious  liberty,  seemed  to  prepare  at  last  a  highway  for 
Protestant  missions.  But  the  Exarch,  uneasy  about  his  own 
influence,  managed  to  induce  the  government  to  adopt 
measures  to  prevent  the  growth  of  Protestantism,  and,  when- 
ever a  door  seemed  to  be  opening  to  Protestant  influences, 
Russia,  with  her  strong  anti-Protestant  instincts,  was  always 
at  hand  to  bar  it  again.  During  the  last  decade  the  hindrances 
have  been  aggravated  by  what  is  otherwise  a  pleasing  fact, 
namely,  the  remarkable  advance  made  by  the  Bulgarians  in 
national  education.  The  result  of  this  was  that  the  American 
schools,  which  had  been  the  leading  schools  in  Bulgaria,  were 
thrust  into  the  shade. 

The  mission  of  the  American  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 
has  always  been  conducted  on  a  small  scale  owing  to  lack  of 
funds  (v.  Reid-Gracey,  "  Methodist  Episcopal  Missions,"  Yol. 
Ill,  pp.  200-272).  Generally  there  have  been  but  two  mis- 
sionaries at  any  one  time,  and  for  years  only  one  missionary 
of  this  Church,  in  Bulgaria.  Short  spurts  of  increased  activity 
have  alternated  with  long  and  serious  deliberations  as  to 
whether  the  work  should  not  be  altogether  abandoned.  In 
the  course  of  time  three  centres  of  work  secured  a  compara- 
tively firm  footing,  a  secondary  school  for  boys  at  Sistova 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        169 

(serving  as  a  training-school  for  a  native  ministry,  closed  un- 
happily in  1906) ;  an  advanced  girls'  school  at  Lof tcha  (admin- 
istered by  some  lady  workers  of  the  Women's  Board) ;  and  a 
printing-press  in  Kustchuk.  The  great  opposition,  the  lack  of 
a  fixed  mission  policy,  and  the  want  of  funds  have  combined 
to  make  the  result  small.  There  are  432  members  of  the 
Methodist  churches,  including  nineteen  on  trial ;  nineteen 
primary  schools,  ten  churches  and  chapels,  and,  altogether, 
1,000  adherents.  Neither  the  masses  nor  the  leaders  in  church 
and  state  appear  to  be  much  influenced. 

With  more  far-sighted  deliberation  the  American  Board  ex- 
tended its  work  not  only  in  the  independent  Bulgarian  terri- 
tories of  Eastern  Rumelia  (Philippopolis  in  1858)  and  Bulgaria 
(Samokow  and  Sofia  in  186 Y),  but  also  among  the  numerous 
Bulgarians  who  were  languishing  under  Turkish  rule  in 
Macedonia  (Salonica  became  a  station  of  the  Board  in  1894), 
and  in  Albania  (Monastir  in  1873),  everywhere,  according  to 
the  wide  scheme  of  its  work,  reaching  out  to  the  members 
of  other  Eastern  Churches,  especially  Greeks  and  Armenians. 
In  Macedonia,  Thrace  and  Albania  the  Board's  work  was 
seriously  crippled  by  the  restless  strivings  of  the  unruly  peo- 
ples there  for  independence.  The  Bulgarians  hoped  for  an- 
nexation to  the  autonomous  Principality  of  Bulgaria,  the 
Greeks  wished  for  incorporation  in  the  Kingdom  of  Greece, 
the  Albanians  were  trying  to  found  an  independent  state,  and 
the  Servians  were  keen  to  enlarge  their  kingdom.  All  were 
of  one  accord  in  the  ardent  desire  to  shake  off  the  despotic 
rule  of  Turkey,  but,  at  the  same  time,  they  were  in  a  deplor- 
able degree  fanatical  and  ruthless  antagonists  of  one  another. 
And  all  were  little  more  than  pawns  in  the  great  international 
chess-play  of  the  Oriental  question,  moved  about  by  the  great 
powers  at  their  will.  It  was  a  chaos  of  revolution  and  in- 
trigues, rendered  the  more  confused  by  the  increasing  number 
of  bandits.  An  American  missionary,  Kev.  W.  W.  Merriam, 
was  murdered  by  the  bandits  on  the  3d  of  July,  1862.  Miss 
Ellen  Stone  was  kept  a  prisoner  from  the  3d  of  September, 
1901,  till  the  25th  of  February,  1902,  and  was  set  free  only  on 


1  yo     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  payment  of  a  ransom  of  T  £15,000.  The  American  Board 
has  the  credit  of  having  provided  a  wholesome  Protestant 
literature  in  the  modern  Bulgarian  tongue.  The  translation 
of  the  Bible  by  Dr.  Elias  Riggs  in  1891  has  been  referred  to 
already.  The  same  diligent  author  also  prepared,  amongst 
other  books,  a  Bulgarian  commentary  of  the  New  Testament. 
The  Methodist  missionary.  Rev.  Dr.  Long,  who  was  for  many 
years  a  professor  at  the  Robert  College  in  Bebek,  also  en- 
gaged in  this  literary  work.  There  was  a  printing-press,  first 
in  Constantinople,  then,  for  a  time,  after  Bulgaria  became  in- 
dependent, in  Philippopolis  and  now  in  Samokow.  The  chief 
paper  is  the  Zornitza  (Morning  Star),  published  at  first  in 
Constantinople  and  later  in  Philippopolis.  It  is  a  monthly 
Protestant  magazine  in  the  Bulgarian  tongue,  with  a  circula- 
tion of  1,300  ;  but  its  existence  is  at  present  threatened  by 
want  of  funds.  The  educational  work  of  the  Board  has  had 
its  centre  since  1872  in  the  "  Collegiate  and  Theological  In- 
stitute "  in  Samokow,  which  was  formerly  a  pattern  for  the 
Bulgarian  educational  system,  but  has  now  been  equalled  or 
even  excelled  by  the  government  schools.  Though  the 
American  school  finds  it  so  difficult  to  compete  with  the 
national  colleges,  which  are  amply  subsidized  and  privileged 
by  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction,  yet  the  Board  main- 
tains its  institution,  because  it  seems  indispensable  for  the 
building  up  of  a  strong  native  ministry  and  teaching  staff,  and 
as  a  counterpoise  against  the  spirit  of  infidelity  and  irreligion 
prevailing  in  the  public  schools.  The  numerical  results  of  the 
Board's  work  are  but  moderate.  In  addition  to  1,408  com- 
municants there  are  3,954  adherents,  i.  e.,  a  total  of  5,362 
Bulgarians  and  Greeks  in  the  European  Turkey  Mission. 

Without  connection  with  the  Board,  a  Bulgarian  Evangelical 
Society  is  working  in  Sofia.  Another  mission  was  maintained 
by  the  Southern  Presbyterians  in  Salonica  from  1874  to  1892, 
but  has  been  abandoned.  At  the  urgent  request  of  the 
Albanians  the  Board  has  recently  decided  to  found  a  station 
for  them  in  Koritza.  There  are  also  some  out-stations  in 
Servia  {e.  g.^  Prishtina)  and  in  Bosnia  {e.  g.,  Mitrovitza).    The 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       171 

Turkish  government,  however,  is  so  little  favourable  to  such 
attempts  to  raise  the  subject  races,  that  the  censor  has  for  six 
years  withheld  permission  to  publish  a  translation  of  the 
four  Gospels,  ready  for  publication,  because  the  Albanians  are 
not  to  have  a  national  literature. 

(c)  Missions  among  the  Tm'ks.  The  question  will  be 
asked,  Has,  then,  no  work  been  done  by  the  Board  among 
the  Muhammadans  of  Turkey  ?  Reserve  is  necessary  in 
giving  an  answer.  The  Board  is  very  chary  of  information 
on  this  point,  knowing  that  the  Turkish  officials  scan 
its  reports  with  suspicion.  Mere  hints  that  interest  has 
been  awakened  among  Turks  or  the  slightest  allusions  to 
Muhammadan  converts  would  put  Turkish  detectives  on  the 
track,  and  lead  to  a  breaking  off  of  any  disposition  on  the  part 
of  a  Turk  to  approach  the  mission,  or  even  to  the  ruin  of  a 
convert.  Yet  the  silence  of  the  Board  is  not  due  merely  to 
wise  reticence ;  the  missionaries,  owing  to  the  thoroughly 
hostile  position  of  the  Porte,  have,  as  a  rule,  abstained  from 
trying  to  influence  the  Muhammadan  population.  They  know 
that  any  such  attempts  would  arouse  the  wrath  of  the  govern- 
ment, and  perhaps  lead  to  their  being  banished.  This  would 
not  benefit  the  Muhammadans,  and  it  would  put  an  end  to 
the  work  of  the  mission  among  the  ancient  Churches.  A 
single  piece  of  work  among  the  Muhammadans  may  be  re- 
corded here. 

In  1843  an  Armenian  and  a  Greek,  who  had  been  induced, 
while  intoxicated,  to  turn  Muhammadans,  and  had  subse- 
quently reverted  to  Christianity,  were  beheaded  in  Constanti- 
nople. Lord  Stratford  Canning  de  Redcliffe,  the  British  am- 
bassador, used  this  notorious  fact  as  a  ground  for  remon- 
strating strongly  with  the  Porte,  and  forced  the  proclamation 
of  an  edict  that  henceforth  in  Turkey  no  one  should  be 
"persecuted  on  account  of  his  religious  views."  The  Porte 
promised  that  no  "Christian  renegade  "  might  thereafter  be  con- 
demned to  death.  The  wording  was,  unfortunately,  dubious. 
"  Christian  renegade  "  might  denote  merely  one  born  a  Chris- 
tian, who  had  temporarily  become  a  Muhammadan.     Accord- 


1 72     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

ingly  two  Muhamraadans  who  had  become  Christians  were 
actually  punished  with  death  in  Aleppo  and  Adrianople  re- 
spectively, in  the  years  1852  and  1853.  Britain  again  stepped 
in  and  demanded  an  assurance  that  such  a  crime  should  not 
occur  again. 

As  it  was  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War  (1853-1856),  the  gov- 
ernment was  very  dependent  on  the  good-will  of  Britain  and 
France,  which  alone  stood  between  the  Porte  and  ruin.  The 
Sultan  was  therefore  willing  to  comply  with  the  demands  of 
his  two  allies  and  issued  on  the  18th  of  February,  1856,  the 
famous  hatti  humayoun  with  his  autograph  affixed,  granting 
full  religious  liberty  throughout  the  whole  of  Turkey.  Chris- 
tians were  to  have  equal  rights  with  Muhammadans  and  to  be 
eligible  for  all  offices  of  state. 

"Every  distinction  or  designation  tending  to  make  any 
class  whatever  of  the  subjects  .  .  .  inferior  to  another 
class,  on  account  of  their  religion,  language  or  race,  shall 
be  forever  effaced  from  the  administrative  protocol.  .  .  . 
As  all  forms  of  religion  are  and  shall  be  freely  professed 
in  my  dominions,  no  subject  of  my  empire  shall  be  hin- 
dered in  the  exercise  of  the  religion  that  he  professes, 
nor  shall  be  in  any  way  annoyed  on  this  account.^  The 
nomination  and  choice  of  all  functionaries  and  other  employees 
of  my  empire,  being  wholly  dependent  upon  my  sovereign 
will,  all  the  subjects  of  my  empire,  without  distinction  of 
nationality,  shall  be  admissible  to  public  employments,  and 

^  The  clause  originally  inserted  about  converts  ran  thus  :  "As  all  forms  of 
religion  are  and  shall  be  freely  exercised  in  the  Ottoman  dominions,  no  subject 
of  His  Majesty  the  Sultan  shall  be  hindered  in  the  exercise  of  the  religion  he 
professes,  nor  shall  be  in  any  way  disquieted  on  that  account,  and  no  one  shall 
be  compelled  to  change  his  religion."'  Obviously  this  clause  left  an  opening  for 
the  persecution  of  a  man  who  had  voluntarily  changed  his  religion.  The  Porte 
pleaded  that  the  Sultan  had  no  power  to  alter  the  law  of  the  Koran,  which  pun- 
ishes a  "  renegade  "  with  death.  Lord  Stratford,  however,  refused  to  sign  the 
decree  unless  he  had  in  his  hands  a  solemn  declaration  of  the  Grand  Vizier,  to 
the  effect  that  freedom  must  apply  to  all  renegades, — renegades  from  Islam  to 
Christianity  and  vice  versa.  The  "  divine  "  law  of  the  Koran  was  not  altered, 
but  the  Porte  engaged  not  to  carry  it  out.  The  powers  had  to  be  satisfied  with 
this  concession. 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       173 

qualified  to  fill  them  according  to  their  capacity  and  merit. 
.  .  .  All  commercial,  correctional  and  criminal  suits  be- 
tween Mussulman  and  Christian  or  other  non-Mussulman 
subjects,  or  between  Christians  or  other  non-Mussulmans  of 
different  sects,  shall  be  referred  to  mixed  tribunals.  The  pro- 
ceedings of  these  tribunals  shall  be  public.  .  .  .  The  testi- 
mony of  witnesses  shall  be  received,  without  distinction,  upon 
an  oath  taken  according  to  the  religious  law  of  each  sect. 
.  .  .  Penal,  correctional,  and  commercial  laws,  and  rules  of 
procedure  for  the  mixed  tribunals,  shall  be  drawn  up  as  soon 
as  possible,  and  formed  into  a  code.  Translations  of  them 
shall  be  published  in  all  the  languages  current  in  the  empire." 
(See  the  full  text  of  the  hatti  humayoun  in  "  Forty  Years  in 
Turkey,"  pp.  486  ff.)  This  decree  seemed  to  open  the  way  for 
extensive  work  among  the  Muhammadans  of  Turkey.  At 
once  more  missionaries  were  added  to  the  Board's  staff.  Other 
societies,  too,  began  work.  In  1858  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  sent  to  Constantinople  the  ablest  of  their  Muhammadan 
missionaries,  Kev.  Gottlieb  Pfander,  D.  D.,  already  known 
to  us  by  his  labours  in  Transcaucasia.  He  was  accompanied 
by  Eev.  Dr.  Koelle,  formerly  a  missionary  in  West  Africa. 
Both  these  men  were  to  commence  a  mission  to  the  Muham- 
madans in  Constantinople.  Two  other  men  were  sent  as  as- 
sistants,— a  younger  English  missionary  of  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society,  and  one  from  the  Society  for  the  Propagation 
of  the  Gospel.  The  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  opened 
new  depots  and  shops,  thus  extending  its  work  considerably. 

In  the  first  few  years  hopes  were  of  the  brightest.  Many 
Turks  showed  receptivity  towards  the  doctrines  of  Christi- 
anity. Public  discourses  of  the  missionaries  on  religious  sub- 
jects were  well  attended.  Many  came  to  the  houses  of  the 
English  and  American  missionaries  and  had  interesting  con- 
versations with  them  for  hours  together.  Conversions  and 
baptisms  followed.  The  baptism  of  Selim  Effendi  created  a 
great  sensation  ;  he  took  the  name  of  Williams.  Other  promi- 
nent converts  were  the  former  Muhammadan  priest,  Abdi 
Effendi,  and  Mahmud  Effendi.     Fifteen  or  twenty  Turks  may 


174     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

have  been  baptized.  In  the  summer  of  1864  ten  adults  were 
confirmed  at  one  time.  This  gave  rise  to  foolish  and  exag- 
gerated reports,  such  as  the  report  that  25,000,  or  even  400,000 
Turks  had  been  converted  to  Protestantism. 

But  a  storm  was  brewing,  of  which  the  Protestant  Mission 
was  wholly  unconscious.  The  suspicions  of  the  Sultan  and  of 
hostile  reactionaries  were  excited  in  two  ways.  A  strong 
party  was  planning  to  separate  from  Islam  and  to  form  a  re- 
ligious community  of  their  own.  Its  members  are  even  said 
to  have  sent  a  petition  to  the  Sultan  asking  him  to  place  one 
of  the  mosques  in  the  city  at  their  disposal  for  religious  serv- 
ices. The  leaders  of  this  party  had  no  connection  whatever 
with  the  missionaries,  who  nevertheless  fell  under  suspicion. 
The  other  thing  which  disturbed  the  Sultan  was  that  Dr.  Pfan- 
der  was  busy  forging  spiritual  weapons  for  the  mission,  in  the 
form  of  apologetic  and  polemic  tracts.  He  had  just  finished  a 
Turkish  translation  of  his  "  Mizan  ul  Haqq,"  and  had  put  it 
through  the  press.  Now,  if  the  few  Persian  copies,  which  had 
before  come  into  the  hands  of  Turks,  had  caused  such  a  stir, 
it  was  to  be  expected  that  the  Turkish  translation  of  the  work 
would  be  far  more  disturbing.  Violent  counter-publications 
against  Pfander  and  his  work  were  issued  with  the  assistance 
of  the  government.  Being  thus  attacked,  Pfander  openly 
replied. 

The  storm  burst  suddenly  and  destructively.  Ten  or  thir- 
teen Protestant  Turks  in  Constantinople  were  seized  without 
previous  warning  on  the  17th  of  July,  1864,  and  thrown  into 
prison.  The  next  day,  the  ofBces  of  the  British  and  Ameri- 
can Bible  Societies  as  well  as  the  assembly  halls  of  the  mission 
were  closed  by  the  police,  and  the  books  confiscated.  Even 
the  missionaries  were  forcibly  driven  out  of  their  houses. 

It  is  true  that  by  the  intervention  of  the  British  ambassador, 
backed  by  his  government,  most  of  the  prisoners  were  released 
or  were  treated  less  harshly  in  prison,  and  the  Bible-depots 
and  the  confiscated  Bibles,  though  not  Pfander's  books,  were 
restored  to  the  missionaries.  Nevertheless  the  subsequent 
oflB^cial  correspondence  led  merely  to  the  declaration  that  a 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia       175 

government  can  grant  toleration  only  in  so  far  as  the  genius 
of  the  people  permits.  That,  further,  though  the  hatti 
huraayoun  was  intended  to  grant  religious  liberty  to  all,  yet 
it  did  not  sanction  either  public  attacks  on  any  of  the  existing 
religious  bodies  nor  deliberate  proselytizing.  That  it  was  the 
right  and  duty  of  the  Porte  as  the  guardian  of  the  public 
peace  to  prevent  such  things,  and,  if  necessary,  to  suppress 
them  by  force.  The  Bible  might  be  distributed  like  the 
Koran,  but  it  must  not  be  hawked  about  in  the  streets  (col- 
portage).  The  missionaries  must  exercise  patience  and  give 
expression  to  their  opinions  only  with  due  regard  for  the 
opinions  of  others.  Open  propagandism  was  forbidden.  The 
fact  is  that  there  was  no  longer  a  vigorous  Lord  Stratford 
Canning  representing  Britain.  In  his  place  was  Sir  Henry 
Bulwer,  a  weak  man,  who  did  not  conceal  his  disapproval  of 
"  renting  places  for  religious  addresses,  nor  of  hiring  men  to 
go  among  the  Turks  in  order  to  read  to  them  books  which  try 
to  prove  that  the  Koran  and  its  Prophet  are  full  of  errors  and 
absurdities."  With  a  man  of  such  principles  in  power,  the 
Protestant  Mission  was  indeed  delivered  over  into  the  hands 
of  the  fanatic  reactionaries. 

The  mission  has  never  recovered  from  the  effects  of  this 
blow.  Dr.  Pfander  died  in  Richmond,  London,  on  the  1st  of  De- 
cember, 1865,  and,  soon  after,  the  three  most  faithful  Turkish 
agents,  Mahmud  Effendi  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel,  and  Selim  Effendi  Williams  and  Abdi  Effendi  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  also  passed  away.  Dr.  Koelle  re- 
mained in  the  service  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  until 
1877,  and,  after  retiring  from  active  service,  lived  quietly  in 
Stamboul,  trying  to  win  his  neighbours,  but  with  only  small 
success.  Only  thrice  did  he  experience  the  joy  of  baptizing 
converted  Muhammadans.  "Proselyting  efforts,"  he  wrote 
in  1875,  "  offend  both  the  religious  and  the  political  suscepti- 
bilities of  the  Mussulmans.  .  .  .  An  European  missionary 
could  not  visit  in  Muhammadan  houses  without  rousing  sus- 
picion. No  church  for  the  public  Christian  service  of  Turks 
would  have  any  chance  of  being  authorized  by  the  govern- 


1 76     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

ment.  No  missionary  school  for  Muhammadan  youths  would 
be  tolerated  "  (Stock,  "  History,"  Yol.  Ill,  p.  114).  Under 
such  circumstances  mission  work  was  an  impossibility.  The 
Church  Missionary  Society  abandoned  its  station  in  Constanti- 
nople in  1877,  and  has  never  since  reopened  it. 

An  event  which  occurred  in  connection  with  this  mission  in 
1879  caused  a  great  commotion  in  Europe.  Dr.  Koelle  was 
secretly  translating  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  into  Turkish, 
with  the  help  of  Ahmed  Tewfik,  one  of  the  respected  Turkish 
ulema.  Suddenly  both  were  thrown  into  prison  by  the  police. 
A  naval  demonstration,  accompanied  by  a  stern  ultimatum 
from  the  English  Premier  Lord  Beaconsfield,  was  required  to 
effect  the  alteration  of  the  sentence  of  death  on  Ahmed  Tewfik 
to  banishment  to  Scio.  Tewfik  escaped  later  to  London, 
where  his  baptism  in  1881  caused  a  great  sensation.  But  he 
did  not  turn  out  well ;  in  fact  he  seems  later  to  have  returned 
to  Islam. 

Forty  years  elapsed  before  another  deliberate  attempt 
was  made  to  begin  a  mission  among  the  Turks  in  Turkey. 
Dr.  Lepsius'  "  German  Orient  Mission "  began  work  in 
Turkey  and  Persia  in  1900.  The  plan  of  the  mission  is  to 
make  Khoi  in  Persia,  Diarbekr  and  Urfa  in  Asiatic  Turkey, 
and  Philippopolis  in  European  Turkey,  centres  from  which  to 
carry  on  work  among  Muhammadans.  Urfa  and  Diarbekr 
are  to  be  centres  of  medical  work.  Khoi,  with  its  industrial 
work,  is  to  serve  as  the  starting-point  of  a  mission  among  the 
Moslem  Kurds.  In  Philippopolis,  where  a  printing-press  has 
been  set  up,  literary  work  is  to  be  the  chief  form  of  activity. 
But  all  this  is  still  in  the  initial  stage. 

7.  TTie  JSTew  Era  in  Turkey 
Up  to  the  24:th  of  July,  1908,  there  seemed  to  be  no  pros- 
pect of  any  great  change  in  the  situation  of  Protestant  mis- 
sions in  Turkey  as  we  have  described  it.  Mission  work  was 
hindered  on  every  hand  by  the  unremitting  opposition  of  the 
government  and  its  officials.  !N"o  new  school  could  be  opened, 
no  new  book  printed,  without  a  petty  strife  against  malevo- 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and  Armenia        177 

lent  magistrates,  or  narrow-minded  censors.  Every  forward 
step  had  to  be  made  against  decided  resistance.  Progress  was 
necessarily  slow. 

Suddenly,  without  warning,  a  peaceful  revolution  took 
place.  At  about  one  o'clock  on  that  24th  of  July  the  tele- 
graph spread  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Turkey  the 
unexpected  news  that  the  Sultan  had  granted,  "  at  the  desire 
of  the  people  and  by  his  own  decree,"  a  liberal  constitution 
with  a  very  large  measure  of  freedom.  Freedom  of  speech 
and  of  the  press,  religious  freedom,  and  freedom  of  travel 
were  guaranteed.  The  whole  system  of  spies  was  abolished. 
A  Parliament  with  a  chamber  of  commons  and  a  senate  should 
direct  the  affairs  of  the  country. 

Even  now,  months  later,  it  is  not  clear  what  were  the 
causes  of  this  radical  change  in  the  politics  of  Sultan  Abdul 
Hamid.  Certain  it  is  that  he  was  sorely  pressed  by  England 
and  Eussia  with  regard  to  the  Macedonian  reforms,  and  that 
he  was,  with  all  his  famous  subtlety,  at  his  wits'  ends  to  baffle 
again,  as  so  many  times  before,  the  impatient  powers.  Equally 
certain  is  it  that  the  energetic  "  Young  Turkey  "  party  had 
quietly  won  an  enormous  influence,  especially  in  the  army, 
and  that  the  Second  and  Third  Army  Corps  were  ready  to 
march  against  the  Sultan,  if  he  persisted  in  refusing  liberal 
reforms.  It  is  also  certain  at  last  that  not  even  the  Sultan's 
most  confidential  councillors,  nor  the  foreign  ambassadors, 
nor  the  American  missionaries  in  Constantinople  foresaw  the 
event  three  days  in  advance.  It  is  said  that  the  Grand  Yizier, 
Ferid  Pasha,  had  just  stepped  into  his  carriage  to  go  to  the 
Sublime  Porte  for  a  meeting  of  ministers,  when  he  was  told 
that  he  and  all  his  colleagues  had  been  deposed,  and  their 
whole  regime  overthrown. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  secret  reasons  of  the  sudden 
change,  it  was  hailed  by  the  people  with  the  utmost  joy,  even 
with  loud  outbursts  of  triumphant  jubilation.  The  event  was 
everywhere  celebrated  by  great  popular  gatherings  in  city 
streets,  squares,  mosques,  and  churches,  with  addresses  by 
Muhammadan  and  Christian  speakers.     Governors  or  other 


178     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

high  officials  announced  the  surprising  news,  the  decree  of  the 
Sultan  was  publicly  read,  the  crowd  cheered  wildly,  military 
bands  played  the  national  anthem.  Every  one  delivered 
speeches  denounciog  the  old  regime,  and  processions  paraded 
through  the  streets  with  banners  and  flags  and  bands  of  music. 
It  was  like  a  general  paroxysm  of  the  usually  so  quiet  and 
dignified  Mussulmans  and  Oriental  Christians. 

When,  on  September  1st,  an  Imperial  Mission  sped  from 
Damascus  to  Medina  formally  to  open  the  Hejaz  Railway, 
they  saw  the  stations  decorated  with  banners  bearing  the 
motto :  "  Hurriet,  Musaret,  Ukhuvvet "  (Liberty,  Equality, 
Fraternity).  At  the  ceremonial  opening  no  speech  excited 
more  enthusiasm  than  one  by  an  Egyptian  who  said,  "  The 
Prophet  did  not  permit  the  railway  to  reach  the  holy  city 
before  the  Khalif  granted  a  constitution  to  his  people." 

One  very  remarkable  feature  of  this  general  rejoicing  was 
that  the  gulf  between  Muhammadans  and  Christians  seemed 
in  a  moment  to  be  bridged  over,  even  to  be  filled  up.  Every- 
where Turkish  officials  and  Armenian  ecclesiastics  embraced 
each  other,  exchanging  congratulations  and  pledging  them- 
selves to  mutual  brotherhood.  In  Beirut  on  the  open  street 
a  venerable  sheikh  with  green  turban  and  flowing  robes  de- 
clared, in  a  stentorian  voice,  that  all  hatred  and  jealousy 
against  the  Christians  was  now  passed,  and  in  the  future  they 
were  to  live  as  brethren.  When  people  caught  sight  of  a 
Christian  priest  and  a  turbaned  Moslem  in  proximity  to  each 
other,  they  pushed  them  into  each  other's  arms,  and  made 
them  kiss  one  another.  In  Stamboul,  on  the  15th  of  August, 
there  was  an  imposing  peace  gathering  in  the  Armenian  ceme- 
tery, where,  in  1896,  about  5,000  massacred  Armenians  had 
been  interred  in  long  trenches.  About  10,000  persons,  mem- 
bers of  the  Young  Turkey  committee,  students  of  the  military 
school,  high  officers,  priests  and  bishops  in  their  robes,  were 
present,  and  in  sight  of  the  memorials  of  former  hostility  and 
bloodshed  everlasting  fraternity  was  proclaimed. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  all  the  hopes  thus  suddenly 
aroused  will  be  fulfilled.     We  know  too  well  what  it  meant 


Protestant  Missions  in  Turkey  and^ Armenia       179 

to  almost  every  country  in  Europe  to  change  from  absolutism 
to  a  constitutional  parliament.  The  lessons  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  of  the  volcanic  year,  1848,  are  not  easily  for- 
gotten. And  the  short  career  of  parliamentary  rule  in  Eussia 
and  Persia  is  too  significant  to  be  overlooked.  The  probabil- 
ity of  a  reaction  is  great  in  Turkey  in  proportion  to  the  sud- 
denness of  the  change.  The  danger  is  all  the  more  imminent 
since  Austria  has  taken  advantage  of  the  confused  situation 
to  assume  suzerainty  over  the  long  occupied  provinces  of 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  while  Bulgaria  has  crowned  Prince 
Ferdinand  as  king,  and  in  the  Young  Turkey  party  there  is  a 
strong  tendency  to  grant  autonomy  to  Macedonia.  Thus 
there  are  on  every  side  combustible  materials  for  a  general 
conflagration  in  the  Near  East,  just  at  a  moment  when  peace 
is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  the  prestige  and  success  of  the 
new  regime. 

Yet,  though  a  measure  of  reaction  may  follow,  it  is  Iiardly 
possible  that  the  Sultan  or  his  successors  can  entirely  reverse 
what  he  has  done ;  it  is  highly  probable  that  there  will  be 
some  stability  in  the  freedom  granted.  And  that  is  just  what 
the  Protestant  missions  most  sorely  need.  (1)  Freedom  of 
the  press.  The  endless  red  tape  necessary  in  obtaining  per- 
mission to  publish  a  tract  or  a  supplement  to  a  periodical ;  the 
submission  of  each  manuscript  in  triplicate  to  two  successive 
censors,  and  the  necessity  of  permission  to  publish,  even  after 
permission  to  print  has  been  given,  all  this  and  much  more 
petty  tyranny  is  done  away  with  {Miss.  Rev.,  Vol.  18,  p.  745). 
"  Such  words  as  liberty,  constitution,  Macedonia,  patriot,  star, 
which  have  not  appeared  for  years,  may  now  be  used  freely." 

(2)  Freedom  of  travel.  It  will  be  an  enormous  relief  to 
the  missionaries  in  the  large  districts,  with  their  widely 
scattered  congregations,  that  they  will  no  longer  be  de- 
pendent upon  the  granting  of  tezkeres  by  whimsical  magis- 
trates. It  will  greatly  facilitate  the  journeying  of  students 
to  and  from  the  colleges  and  so  bring  many  a  promising  pupil 
to  the  benefits  of  higher  education,  for  whom  it  was  formerly 
out  of  the  question  because  of  the  impossibility  of  getting  a 


i8o     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

tezkere  or  paying  the  necessary  bribes  to  unscrupulous 
officials. 

(3)  Freedom  of  schools.  In  the  political  program  of  the 
Young  Turkey  party  education  takes  a  foremost  place. 
"  Schools  and  instruction  shall  be  free.  Every  citizen  has  the 
right  to  open  private  schools  according  to  the  laws.  All 
schools  shall  be  under  government  inspection.  .  .  .  Kelig- 
ious  institutions  shall  be  exempt  from  these  regulations."  It  is 
not  yet  known  what  the  proposed  government  school  system 
will  be  like,  but  it  is  probable  that  it  will  provide  ample  room 
for  the  large  educational  establishments  of  the  various  mis- 
sions. 

How  far  direct  mission  work  among  the  Muhammadans 
will  be  facilitated  by  the  new  order  of  things,  it  is  not  yet 
possible  to  say.  Certainly  there  are,  among  the  leaders  of 
the  liberal  party,  broad-minded  and  cultured  men,  who  really 
wish  full  religious  liberty,  including  the  right  to  change  one's 
religion  according  to  the  convictions  of  conscience.  Soon 
after  the  proclamation  of  the  constitution  there  appeared  in 
an  influential  paper  of  the  Young  Turkey  party  a  series  of 
articles  demanding  the  translation  of  the  Koran  into  Turkish, 
and  the  removal  of  the  veil  and  other  disabilities  of  women. 
But  it  was  followed  almost  immediately  by  the  following 
official  proclamation  :  "  Since  certain  papers  are  publishing 
articles  detrimental  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  Islam  .  .  . 
(articles  which)  are  hurtful  to  the  heart  and  conscience  of 
the  people,  and  arouse  tumult,  editors  and  publishers  of  such 
articles  shall  be  sentenced  according  to  the  law." 

However  uncertain  the  future  may  be,  it  is  sure  that  we 
are  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of  Prot- 
estant missions  in  Turkey,  and  it  is  very  probable  that  it  will 
be  a  time  of  great  possibilities,  an  unheard  of  "  day  of  oppor- 
tunity," an  open  door  of  approach  not  only  to  the  Armenians 
and  the  other  Christian  peoples,  but  also  to  the  Turks  and  Kurds 
and  other  non-Christian  nations.  May  it  find  the  American 
Board  ready  to  go  forward  with  a  fresh  consciousness  of  her 
responsibility  as  a  bringer  of  light  and  life  to  the  Turkish  East. 


SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE 

(A)  Syria 

IN  no  part  of  Asia  Minor  are  the  racial  and  religious  con- 
ditions more  complicated  than  in  Syria.  The  Lebanon 
and  Anti-Lebanon,  crossing  the  country  from  north  to 
south  in  two  parallel  chains,  form  a  mountainous  region,  diffi- 
cult of  access  by  reason  of  its  rugged  and  pathless  character. 
As  in  the  Alps  and  Pyrenees,  the  Caucasus  and  the  Himalayas, 
so  also  in  Syria,  in  out-of-the-way  places,  all  manner  of  rem- 
nants of  peoples  and  Churches  are  to  be  found.  Of  the  two 
million  inhabitants  (not  counting  Palestine)  about  200,000  be- 
long to  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church,  being  under  the  Patriarch 
of  Antioch.  To  the  Koman  Church  belong  320,000  Maronites 
and  138,000  Melchites,  i.  e.,  Arabic-speaking  Syrians  of  the 
Greek-Melchite  Rite.  In  addition  to  these  there  are  about  15,- 
000  Jacobites,  10,000  Armenians  and  10,000  Protestants — in  all 
about  693,000  Christians.*  Syria  is  one  of  those  parts  of  Turkey 
in  which  the  Christian  population  is  large,  both  absolutely  and 
in  comparison  with  the  Muhammadan  population.  The  pity 
is  that  there  is  hardly  any  possibility  of  united  progress,  be- 
cause of  the  many  ecclesiastical  and  national  divisions  among 

1  According  to  the  statistics  of  Dr.  William  Thomson,  which,  though  made 
years  ago,  are  of  value  to-day,  Syria  had  a  population  of  from  1,360,000  to 
1,864,000,  comprising 

Sunnites,  565,000  Maronites  180,000-200,000 

Nusairiyeh    ]  Melchites  60,000 

and  ^150,000-200,000  Orthodox  Greeks  240,000 

Ismailidians  j 

Druses  80,000-100,000  Armenians,  \      „..  ^f.^, 

Metawileh  25,000-30,000  Jacobites  and  others  /  •^"'"^" 

Total  number  of  Total  of  Christians  (say)  520,000 

Muhammadans  (say)     850,000 
Total  number  of  Jews    30,000 

181 


]82     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  Christians.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  Koman 
Church  has  by  far  the  greatest  number  of  adherents.  Among 
Muhammadans,  too,  there  is  the  greatest  diversity.  Whereas 
outside  of  Syria  you  find  in  Islam  only  dervish  orders  or  sects 
of  doctrinal  or  ascetic  character,  here  in  Syria  there  are  a 
number  of  peculiar  religious  bodies  of  a  national  character 
with  hardly  any  Muhammadan  characteristics.  The  best 
known  of  these  bodies,  the  Druses,  numbers  about  83,000,  half 
of  whom  inhabit  the  Lebanon  and  Anti-Lebanon  Mountains 
to  the  south  of  the  railway  from  Beirut  to  Damascus,  the 
other  half  living  in  the  wild  mountainous  district  of  Hauran, 
whence  the  name  Jebel  ed  Drus.  Probably  an  aboriginal 
tribe  of  the  Syrian  mountains,  they  have  maintained  their 
racial  and  religious  identity  by  adhering  to  their  religious 
mysteries.  When  the  Shiah  party  spread  in  Asia  Minor  un- 
der the  Abasside  Khalifs  of  Bagdad  (750  a.  d.),  two  sects  of 
them  were  formed,  the  Imamites  and  the  Ismailites.  The 
Shiahs  of  both  sects  hold  the  belief  that  Allah  has  revealed 
himself  at  different  times  in  various  historical  personages,  the 
favourite  theory  being  that  of  a  series  of  imams  appearing 
regularly  in  each  generation,  so  that  every  generation  possesses 
an  imam  as  the  exponent  of  the  revelation  of  Allah.  Thus 
there  is  a  more  or  less  lengthy  series  of  prophets  (incarnations 
of  Allah),  which  culminates  in  the  hero  of  each  particular 
sect.  About  the  year  780  a.  d.  a  quarrel  arose  among  the 
Shiahs,  who,  until  that  time,  had  generally  acknowledged  the 
descendants  of  Ali  as  the  only  true  imams.  The  question  upon 
which  the  Shiahs  divided  was  whether  Muhammad  el  IIabib,the 
son  of  Ismail,  was  the  legitimate  imam,  or  Musa  Kasim,  who 
had  been  nominated  by  Ismail's  father  after  his  son's  death. 
The  Ismailites  held  the  former  view,  the  Imamites  the  latter. 
As  a  result  of  this  division,  the  Imamites  reckon  eleven  imams, 
the  last  of  whom  died  about  900  a.  d.,  and  will  reappear  some 
time  as  Mahdi ;  while  the  Ismailites  maintain  that  there  are 
only  seven  imams,  of  whom  the  last  is  Muhammad  el  Habib 
(780-800  A.  D.).  In  the  latter  person  all  the  wisdom  and 
knowledge  of  God  culminated.     To  win  the  victory  for  their 


Syria  and  Palestine  1 83 

view,  the  Ismailites  conducted  an  active  propaganda  by  means 
of  a  special  religious  order,  the  Dais,  or  Missionaries,  one  of 
the  most  active  of  whom,  Abu  Abdallah,  went  to  Egypt  about 
900  A.  D.,  and  gained  so  great  an  influence  that  he  was  able  to 
place  Egypt  under  the  dominion  of  Ubeidallah,  a  fellow-be- 
liever of  his,  who  became  the  founder  of  the  Fatimide  dynasty 
(909-1171  A.  D.).  One  of  his  successors  was  Hakim  ba  amr 
Allah  (996-1020),  one  of  the  most  notorious  tyrants  and  shed- 
ders  of  blood  that  have  ever  sat  upon  the  throne  of  the  Khalifs. 
He  not  only  persecuted  Christians  most  savagely,  but  also 
committed  bloody  outrages  against  his  fellow-religionists.  He 
took  most  arbitrary  liberties  wijth  the  precepts  of  Islam,  for- 
bidding, the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  discontinuing  for  a  time 
public  prayers  in  the  mosques,  abrogating  the  law  of  the 
jihad,  cursing  the  memory  of  the  first  three  legitimate  Khalifs, 
Abu  Bekr,  Omar  and  Othman,  and  abrogating  their  laws, 
which  form  a  great  portion  of  the  Sunna.  There  were  living 
at  the  court  of  this  tyrant,  of  whom  historians  are  unable  to 
decide  whether  he  was,  or  was  not,  insane,  three  men,  Darazi 
(Muhammad  ibn  Ismail  Darazi),  Akhram  and  Hamza,  whose 
aim  it  was  to  procure  divine  veneration  for  Hakim,  giving  out 
that  in  him  Allah  had  manifested  himself  in  human  form. 
When  Hakim  was  murdered  in  1020,  at  the  instigation  of  his 
sister,  these  three  spread  the  report  that  he  had  withdrawn 
from  the  earth  to  test  the  faith  of  his  adherents,  but  that  he 
would  come  again  in  power  and  glory  to  give  the  kingdom 
of  this  world  to  his  faithful  followers.  This  curious  form  of 
fanaticism  was  zealously  preached  by  Hamza  among  the 
Lebanon  tribe,  which  received  the  name  Druse  from  the 
above-mentioned  Darazi.  They  themselves  assume  the  name 
of  Muwahidin,  i.  e.,  Defenders  of  the  Oneness  of  God.  They 
developed  their  doctrine  into  a  complicated  Gnostic  system, 
decked  out  with  patches  of  Christianity,  and  probably  con- 
taining remnants  of  the  old  Syrian  heathen  nature-worship. 
(It  is  asserted  that  the  Druses  worship  Hakim  in  the  image 
of  a  Golden  Calf,  which  at  any  rate  plays  a  part  in  their  wor- 
ship and  has  not  yet  been  accounted  for.)    They  also  believe 


184     History  of  Protestant  Missions  In  the  Near  East 

in  the  transmigration  of  souls  and  the  final  judgment.  Only 
a  comparatively  small  number  are  initiated  into  these  mys- 
teries and  are  called  aciGicd^  i.  e.,  the  knowing  ones.  The 
mass  of  the  people  goes  by  the  name  of  johha,  or  the  igno- 
rant. And  the  veil  cast  over  their  religion  is  the  harder  to 
lift,  because  it  is  enjoined  on  the  Druses  as  a  duty  to  accom- 
modate themselves  in  word  and  action  to  the  religious  usages 
of  the  countries  in  which  they  live.  This  principle,  called 
taqiyah,  i.  e.,  accommodation  to  Orthodox  Islam  or  to  any 
form  of  Christianity,  or  even,  if  it  be  convenient,  to  Judaism, 
naturally  renders  mission  work  among  the  Druses  not  only 
difficult,  but  also  possibly  illusory.  (The  standard  work  on 
the  religion  of  the  Druses  is  Silvestre  de  Sacy — "  Expose  sur 
la  Eeligion  des  Druses,"  2  vols.,  of  which  there  is  a  none  too 
clear  digest  in  Sell,  "  Essays  on  Islam,"  pp.  147-184.)  The 
rest  of  the  Muhammadan  sects  belong  more  or  less  to  the 
Shiite  family.  But  whereas  the  Druses  are  a  branch  of  the 
Ismailites,  the  Nusairiyeh  regard  themselves  as  Iraamites. 
They  dwell  to  the  north  of  Tripoli  and  beyond  Latakia,  in  a 
part  of  the  mountain  chains  of  Lebanon  which  is  called  after 
them  Jebel  el  Ansariye.  The  name  Nusairiyeh,  a  diminutive 
of  Nasrani — "  Christians  " — is  deceptive  and  has  probably 
been  given  by  opponents.  They  themselves  adopt  the  name 
of  El  Chussaibiyeh  after  their  revered  teacher,  Abu  Abdullah 
el  Chussaibi,  and  trace  their  descent  back  to  the  legitimate 
imam  of  the  Shiites,  Hasan  el  Askari.  They  worship  Ali  as 
an  incarnation  of  God,  and  call  him  figuratively  "  The  Lord  of 
the  Bees,"  who  reveals  himself  in  nature  (sun  and  clouds). 
They  have  retained  many  traces  of  ancient  Syrian  heathenism 
in  their  worship.  Their  number  is  variously  computed,  the 
highest  estimate  being  250,000  ;  but  there  are  probably  not 
more  than  75,000  of  them.  Side  by  side  with  them,  or  scat- 
tered among  them,  are  the  sparse  remnants  of  the  Assassines, 
who  made  themselves  so  notorious  in  the  Crusades ;  they  are 
now  usually  called  simply  Ismailites.  By  this  name  they  are 
at  once  to  be  recognized  as  belonging  to  the  same  group  of 
sects  as  the  Druses.     Their  founder,  Hasan  ibn  Sabah,  took 


Syria  and  Palestine  185 

possession  of  the  mountaia  stronghold  Alamut,  near  Kasvin 
in  Persia,  whence  the  sect  spread  into  ISTorthern  Lebanon,  and 
especially  into  the  region  west  and  north  of  Hamath.  They 
recognize  as  their  legitimate  imam  either  the  Fatiraide  Khalif 
of  Egypt,  or  the  chief  of  their  own  sect.  Their  religious  sim- 
ilarity to  the  Druses  is  exhibited  in  their  worship  of  Ali  as 
divine,  in  the  belief  in  the  incarnation  of  Allah  in  the  imams, 
especially  in  Ali,  and  in  the  arbitrary  allegorical  exegesis  of 
the  Koran,  in  which  they  prove  or  disprove  any  doctrine  as 
they  please.  They,  too,  lay  great  stress  on  strict  secrecy  in 
the  matter  of  doctrine.  Fortunately  they  have  discontinued 
the  practice  of  the  former  terrible  assassinations,  as  a  result  of 
which  their  oriental  nickname,  Hashishim  (hemp-smokers),  was 
corrupted  by  Europeans  into  "  Assassines."  A  similar  tribal 
remnant,  numbering  about  50,000,  are  the  Metawileh,  also  a 
Shiite  sect.  Here  and  there  among  these  sects  are  scattered 
remnants  of  the  Yezides  (devil  worshippers),  who  have  their 
chief  seat  in  the  mountains  to  the  east  and  north  of  Mosul, 
as  also  bands  of  Gipsies  and  other  fragments  of  tribes. 

1.  The  Mission  of  the  American  Board  1823-1870 
The  American  Board  sent  its  first  missionaries  to  the  Near 
East  in  1819,  to  inaugurate  its  great  scheme  of  mission  work. 
Of  the  work  among  Armenians  and  Greeks,  which  was  begun 
eleven  years  later  in  Constantinople,  we  have  treated  in  the 
last  chapter.  Here  we  have  to  do  with  the  work  in  Syria. 
At  first  it  was  rather  difficult  to  obtain  a  suitable  centre  for 
the  work  in  the  Near  East.  The  Board  established  a  kind  of 
headquarters  with  a  printing-press  on  the  island  of  Malta,  as 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  had  done,  in  order  to  prepare 
the  necessary  literature  in  the  various  languages.  The  two 
pioneers,  Rev.  Levi  Parsons  and  Rev.  Pliny  Fisk,  advanced 
to  the  east  coast  of  the  Mediterranean,  yet  did  not  settle  in 
any  one  place,  but  travelled  on,  preaching  and  distributing 
literature  throughout  Syria,  Palestine  and  Egypt.  Parsons 
died  in  1822  in  Alexandria  and  Fisk  on  the  23d  of  October, 
1825.     But  others  were  ready  to  fill  their  places.     As  soon  as 


1 86     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  news  of  the  death  of  Parsons  became  known,  a  young 
American  student  in  Paris,  Jonas  King,  offered  his  services 
to  the  Board,  at  first  only  for  three  months  ;  but  he  was  to 
spend  a  long  life  of  useful  activity  in  the  mission.  In  Oc- 
tober, 1823,  two  other  missionaries  with  their  wives  came  to 
Syria,  Kev.  Wm.  Goodell  and  Kev.  Frank  Bird,  going  first  to 
Jerusalem,  where,  however,  conditions  seemed  to  be  so  unsafe 
that  they  preferred  to  remove  to  Beirut.  This  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  regular  mission  in  Syria,  for  Nicolayson  and  an- 
other missionary  of  the  London  Jewish  Mission,  who  had 
settled  in  Antuf,  to  the  north  of  Beirut,  in  1822,  did  not  long 
remain. 

The  streams  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  which  have 
flooded  Syria  for  three  quarters  of  a  century  took  their  rise 
in  Beirut,  where  both  the  Protestant  and  the  Roman  mission- 
aries have  their  headquarters.  The  first  good  roads  in  Syria 
were  built  from  this  centre  to  Damascus  and  Tripoli.  Beirut 
wa.s  the  starting-point  of  the  railway  to  Damascus,  and  is  the 
centre  of  the  Syrian  telegraphic  system.  It  has  the  only  safe 
harbour  on  the  Syrian  coast,  a  harbour  which  is  entered  day 
and  night  by  steamers  bringing  European  goods  to  be  ex- 
changed for  the  products  of  Syria,  especially  oranges,  silk 
stuffs,  olives  and  dates.  For  beauty  of  situation  Beirut  is 
hardly  surpassed  by  the  loveliest  cities  of  the  world,  her  white 
buildings  rising  in  terraces  from  the  dark  blue  waters  of  the 
Mediterranean  up  to  the  reddish  slopes  of  the  hills  which 
encircle  the  town  and  the  harbour,  alive  with  great  steamers 
and  countless  white-sailed  boats.  Almost  on  the  summit  of 
the  peninsula,  Ras-Beirut,  stands  the  German  Hospital  of  the 
Knights  of  St.  John,  and,  a  little  higher  up,  the  stately  group 
of  buildings  forming  the  Syrian  Protestant  College.  Behind 
Beirut  there  rises  chain  after  chain  of  the  imposing  Lebanon 
range  of  mountains,  its  lower  slopes  covered  with  odorous 
orange  and  lemon  plantations,  higher  up  its  bare  crags  rising 
into  jagged  heights  that  are  covered  with  dazzling  snow. 
Above  this  charming  picture  of  tropical  richness  and  Alpine 
grandeur  stretches  the  deep  blue  dome  of  the  Southern  sky, 


Syria  and  Palestine  187 

in  the  atmosphere  of  which  the  most  distant  objects  appear  to 
be  incredibly  near. 

The  first  years  of  the  American  Mission  opened  hopefully. 
Nearly  every  day  there  came  visitors  of  the  most  various 
creeds,  Greeks,  Maronites,  Melchites,  Armenians,  Arabs  and 
Turks,  to  hold  converse  with  the  missionaries  on  religious 
questions.  A  bishop  of  the  Armenian  Church,  Garabed 
Dionysius,  Avhom  the  superstitions  of  his  Church  had  made 
restive,  and  Wartabet  Jacob,  a  well-educated  Armenian  priest, 
offered  their  services  as  teachers  of  the  language  and  as  as- 
sistants to  the  missionaries.  Several  schools  were  established 
in  and  around  Beirut,  with  an  attendance  of  700  children. 
And  even  100  girls  entered  the  schools,  a  thing  hitherto  un- 
heard of  in  Syria. 

Such  was  the  bright  spring  time  of  the  mission.  Very 
soon,  however,  bitter  enmity,  especially  on  the  part  of  the 
Roman  Church,  was  displayed  against  it.  The  ecclesiastical 
authorities  of  the  Maronites,  Romanists  and  Uniate  Melchites, 
awoke  to  the  danger  threatening  them,  and  did  all  in  their 
power  to  offer  resistance.  In  1824,  not  quite  twelve  months 
after  the  Americans  had  settled  in  Beirut,  the  Roman  Cath- 
olics induced  the  Sultan  to  issue  a  firman  forbidding  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  Holy  Scriptures  in  Turkey.  It  is  true  that 
after  certain  missionaries,  who  had  been  arrested  while  selling 
Bibles  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  had,  through  the  energetic 
interference  of  the  British  consul,  been  avenged  by  the  dis- 
missal of  the  governor  of  Jerusalem,  no  Turkish  official  had 
a  mind  to  burn  his  fingers  in  carrying  out  the  firman.  Yet 
this  laxity  on  the  part  of  the  officials  inflamed  the  enmity  of 
the  Maronite  Patriarch  still  more.  He  came  down  from  his 
mountain  monastery  to  threaten  with  excommunication  any 
Maronite  who  might  let  a  house  to  the  missionaries.  By 
bribery  he  also  hoped  to  gain  influence  over  the  Greek  Bishop, 
and  over  the  Muhammadans  of  higher  rank,  and  so  to  drive 
away  the  Americans.  He. laid  on  the  Americans  the  follow- 
ing curse  :  "  We  allow  no  one  to  receive  the  Americans  ;  by 
the  word  of  Almighty  God  no  one  shall  dare  to  visit  them,  to 


i88     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

do  them  any  service  or  render  them  help,  so  that  they  might 
be  able  to  remain  in  these  parts.  This  we  forbid  most  strictly. 
Every  one  must  avoid  meeting  them.  Whoever  dares  in  his 
obstinacy  to  transgress  this  command,  will  fall  at  once  and 
without  fail  under  the  great  curse  of  the  Church  from  which 
I  alone  can  absolve  him."  Accordingly  whoever  approached 
the  missionaries  was  threatened  with  this  curse,  and  more 
,  than  once  the  bolt  fell  on  an  innocent  head.^  The  death  of 
the  first  martyr  of  the  Gospel  in  Syria  was  due  to  this  Patri-_ 
arch.  Asad  es  Shidiak,  a  young  Maronite,  had,  after  finishing 
his  education  in  the  Maronite  Monastery  School,  Ain  Warka, 
entered  the  service  of  the  missionaries  in  order  to  earn  a  live- 
lihood as  teacher  of  Arabic  and  Syriac.  He  had  as  yet  no 
knowledge  of  Gospel  truth,  and  so  little  was  he  inclined  in  its 
favour  that  he  spent  his  spare  time  in  writing  against  it.  But 
this  very  work  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  examine  the  Bible 
carefully.  And  the  Word  of  God  created  new  life  in  his 
receptive  heart.  Whilst  he  was  studying  the  prophecies  of 
Isaiah,  the  light  broke  in  upon  him.  When  the  Patriarch 
heard  that  he  was  in  communication  with  the  Americans,  he 
summoned  him  to  his  monastery  and,  assisted  by  his  chaplains, 
endeavoured  to  dissuade  him  from  adopting  the  new  faith. 
One  dark  night  Asad  fled  from  the  monastery  and  returned 
to  Beirut,  only,  however,  strengthened  in  his  belief  in  evan- 
gelical truth.  There  he  was  received  with  open  arms  by  the 
missionaries.  Hereupon  the  Patriarch  resorted  to  cunning  in 
order  to  get  him  again  into  his  power.  Solemnly  promising 
him  safe  conduct  and  holding  out  flattering  offers,  he  induced 
him  to  return  to  his  village.  Alma,  where  he  was  handed  over 
by  his  relations  to  the  merciless  prince  of  their  Church.  He 
was  at  once  cast  into  a  dark  cell.     That  was  in  1836.     From 

^  The  curse  of  the  Maronite  Patriarch  in  1829  ran  :  Because  they  have  received 
the  deceiver,  Bird  (a  missionary),  let  them  be  hereby  excluded  from  all  Christian 
society  ;  let  the  curse  cover  them  as  a  garment  and  sink  into  their  members  as 
an  oil  and  make  them  vpither  as  the  fig-tree  vrhich  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  cursed  ; 
the  evil  spirit  shall  also  take  possession  of  them,  torturing  them  day  and  night ; 
no  one  shall  visit  or  greet  them.  Avoid  them  as  mortifying  limbs  and  infernal 
dragons. 


Syria  and  Palestine  189 

that  time  he  was  not  seen  by  any  of  the  missionaries.  He 
made  several  attempts  to  escape  by  night,  but  always  fell  into 
the  hands  of  his  vigilant  keepers,  to  be  taken  back  to  the 
monastery  and  cruelly  punished.  At  last  he  was  cast  into  a 
dark  dungeon,  the  only  exit  from  which  was  built  up.  Six 
thin  slices  of  bread  and  a  cup  of  water  formed  his  meagre 
daily  rations.  Against  filth  and  foulness  he  was  defenseless. 
Nevertheless  he  remained  steadfast.  It  was  probably  three 
years  later,  in  October,  1839,  that  he  was  released  by  death 
from  his  sufferings.  His  body  was  cast  into  a  gorge  and  cov- 
ered with  |Stones.  He  was  the  first  martyr  of  the  Protestant 
Mission  in  Syria,  an  evident  proof  of  what  the  Roman  Church 
intended  to  do  with  Protestants,  if  she  could  lay  her  hands 
on  them. 

This  experience  had  the  advantage  or  disadvantage,  accord- 
ing to  one's  point  of  view,  of  leaving  the  Protestant  Mission 
in  no  doubt  as  to  whether  a  reformation  of  these  Oriental 
Churches  from  within,  with  the  help  of  their  authorities,  was 
possible.  If  the  mission  was  not  to  dissolve  itself,  it  was 
bound  to  prepare  for  war  with  the  hierarchy,  and  to  aim  at 
an  independent  Protestant  church  organization.  The  experi- 
ence of  a  century  has  shown  that  such  a  step  is  absolutely 
necessary  in  any  mission  among  Oriental  Christians. 

A  great  hindrance  to  the  mission  were  the  warlike  disturb- 
ances, which  lasted  nearly  twenty  years  (1820-1840),  all  over 
the  Turkish  Orient.  The  years  1820-1830  were  filled  with 
the  Greek  "War  of  Independence.  Beirut  became  involved, 
being  first  besieged  by  the  Greeks  and  then  plundered  by  the 
Turkish  troops.  In  1828-1830  the  missionaries  had  to  aban- 
don their  work  and  seek  refuge  in  Malta.  Still  more  of  a 
hindrance  were  the  Egyptian-Turkish  troubles,  occasioned  by 
Ibrahim  Pasha.  The  Egyptian  army  conquered  and  occupied 
Palestine  and  Syria  as  far  as  Hamath  and  Aleppo.  The 
Druses,  also,  who  had  till  then  resisted  the  attacks  of  the 
Turks,  were  subdued  in  1835.  An  Anglo-French  fleet  block- 
aded and  cannonaded  Beirut,  and  the  missionaries  were  com- 
pelled once  more  to  flee,  this  time  to  Cyprus.     Only  after  the 


190     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

intervention  of  the  Western  Powers  was  Ibrahim  Pasha 
forced  back  into  Egypt.  The  Turkish  government  was  re- 
stored in  Syria,  and  quieter  times  followed.  In  1842  and 
1845,  Syria  was  once  more  disturbed  by  internal  strife,  in 
which  the  Maronites  attempted  to  humiliate  the  Druses,  who 
were  barely  one-third  of  their  number ;  yet  each  time  they 
were  repulsed  with  great  slaughter.  These  troubles  did  not 
contribute  to  the  progress  of  the  mission. 

In  spite  of  all  these  difficulties,  the  Americans  began  with 
the  distribution  of  evangelical  tracts  and  books.  In  this  work 
they  undertook  long,  trying  journeys  as  far  as  Aleppo  in  the 
north  and  Nazareth  in  the  south.  They  soon  observed 
that  the  Arabic  books  they  possessed  were  defective  and 
also  badly  printed.  The  Board  had,  indeed,  established 
a  printing-press  in  Malta  in  1822,  in  order  to  supply  its 
missions  in  the  Near  East  with  new  and  good  literature;  but 
it  was  found  necessary  to  have  Arab  compositors  working 
under  the  supervision  of  Arabic-speaking  missionaries.  The 
Arabic  department  was,  therefore,  removed  to  Beirut  in  1834. 
But  even  this  did  not  suffice.  Since  up  to  that  time  Arabic 
had  been  chiefly  written  by  hand,  not  printed,  and  since  calig- 
raphy  is  one  of  the  few  arts  open  to  the  orthodox  Moslem,  a 
refined  taste  in  the  matter  of  the  form  of  Arabic  letters  has 
been  developed.  If  the  mission  wanted  its  publications  to  be 
well  received  and  enjoyed  by  the  Arabs,  they  would  have  to 
provide  type  that  would  equal  the  best  handwriting.  Dr.  Eli 
Smith,  that  able  missionary,  who  was  an  excellent  Arabic 
scholar,  collected  about  one  thousand  particularly  beautiful 
characters  out  of  the  most  perfect  manuscripts ;  these  he  had 
cast  into  type  by  a  clever  type-founder,  working  under  his 
guidance.  This  preparatory  work  was  tedious  and  expensive ; 
but  the  result  of  it  was  that  the  productions  of  the  Beirut  Mis- 
sion Press  were  regarded  with  different  eyes  and  read  with 
great  pleasure. 

'  The  printing  oflSce  in  Malta  was  at  that  time  given  up.  The  greater  pare 
of  it  had  been  transferred  in  1833  to  Smyrna,  to  be  taken  later  to  Constanti- 
nople, where  at  the  present  time  the  Board  has  a  large  printing  establishment. 


Syria  and  Palestine  191 

Other  missionary  work  proceeded  but  slowly.  About  the 
year  1834  a  beginning  was  made  with  the  extension  of  the 
educational  work.  First  in  Beirut,  then  in  its  neighbourhood, 
small  schools  for  boys  were  opened.  They  were  of  a  rather 
ill-defined  character,  hardly  more  than  elementary  schools. 
In  1835  a  higher  school  was  opened,  called  a  seminary,  for 
pupils  desiring  special  instruction  in  English  and  other  sub- 
jects, who  were  able  to  pay  something  for  board  and  educa- 
tion. At  that  time  Turkey  had  no  government  schools,  nor 
was  there  any  standard  for  the  missionaries  to  go  by.  Ques- 
tions as  to  the  requirements  made  of  the  pupils  and  the  ob- 
jects of  the  schools  were  answered  rather  differently  by  differ- 
ent missionaries.  Some  attached  chief  importance  to  the 
grounding  of  the  young  men  in  Biblical  knowledge  and  Gospel 
truth,  while  others  thought  it  equally  important  to  give  the 
pupils,  entrusted  to  the  mission,  a  thorough  secular  education, 
especially  in  English,  thus  fitting  them  for  every-day  life. 
Others  again,  and  their  views  at  that  time  gave  shape  to  the 
work,  laid  stress  on  the  training  of  assistants  of  all  kinds  for 
mission  work,  especially  as  teachers  in  the  schools.  The 
seminary  was  afterwards  removed  to  Abeih,  to  the  south  of 
Beirut. 

In  1835,  also,  the  first  girW  school  of  this  mission  was 
opened  in  Beirut,  an  epoch-making  event.  In  1894  a  monu- 
ment was  erected  on  the  spot  where  this  girls'  school,  the 
first  of  its  kind  in  all  Syria,  had  stood.  It  was  said  at  that 
time  that  there  was  not  a  girl  in  all  Syria  who  could  read, 
and  even  educated  Muhammadans  asserted  that  one  might  as 
well  try  to  teach  a  cat  to  read  as  a  girl.  The  missionaries 
were  thus  the  pioneers  of  female  education.  Looking  to-day 
at  the  hundreds  of  girls'  schools  belonging  to  Muhammadans, 
Greeks,  Maronites  and  Jews,  which  cover  Syria  from  Aleppo 
to  Jerusalem,  we  realize  the  change  that  has  taken  place  in 
public  opinion,  a  result  of  the  example  set  by  the  missionaries. 

Comparatively  soon  medical  missionaries  were  sent  to 
Beirut,  though  without  the  modern  equipment  of  hospitals 
and  dispensaries.      The  doctors  helped  wherever  help  was 


ig2      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

needed,  and  bore  a  share  of  the  duties  of  the  other  missiona- 
ries as  well. 

The  missionaries  soon  found  an  opportunity  for  avenging  in 
a  noble  manner  the  death  of  Asad.  When,  in  1845,  the 
Druses  fell  upon  the  Maronites  in  Deir  el  Kamr  and  mas- 
sacred them,  about  200,  among  whom  were  some  of  the 
bitterest  opponents  of  the  Protestants,  sought  refuge  in  the 
houses  of  the  missionaries  and  their  assistants.  Dr.  "William 
Thomson  went  boldly  into  the  midst  of  the  tumult  and  in- 
duced both  parties  to  set  a  safe  watch  over  the  crowded 
Protestant  houses.  Then,  as  a  palace  filled  with  Maronites  was 
stormed  by  the  Druses,  Thomson  again  succeeded  in  arrang- 
ing that  the  threatened  Maronites  should  be  permitted  to 
leave  under  a  white  flag.  As  the  terrified  Maronites  had 
nothing  to  eat,  the  missionaries  at  once  baked  bread  near  Deir 
el  Kamr,  with  all  the  flour  available  there,  while  they  sent  by 
night  to  Beirut  for  fresh  supplies.  Then  they  sent  the 
Maronites,  still  trembling  for  their  lives,  to  a  place  of  safety. 
That  day  the  Maronite  and  Greek  bishops  of  Beirut  issued 
proclamations  to  their  people,  calling  upon  them  to  render 
protection  to  members  of  the  American  Mission  in  any  similar 
calamity. 

An  interesting  episode  in  the  years  1835  to  1842  was  the 
friendly  approach  of  the  Druses  to  the  mission.  We  have  al- 
ready mentioned  that  the  Druses  had  been,  in  1835,  conquered 
by  the  Egyptian  Viceroy,  Ibrahim  Pasha.  Until  then  they 
had  made  some  pretense  of  being  Moslems,  in  order  thus  to 
safeguard  themselves  against  the  oppression  and  humiliating 
treatment  to  which  Christians  were  exposed.  Now  the  tables 
were  turned,  for,  after  their  subjugation,  they  were,  as  Mu- 
hararaadans,  compelled  to  send  their  young  men  to  serve  as 
soldiers.  Now  it  is  well  known  that  only  Moslems  are  per- 
mitted to  enter  the  army.  Christians  being  excluded.  The 
Egyptian  Yiceroy,  like  the  Sultan  in  later  years,  desired 
greatly  to  have  these  tall  and  robust  mountaineers  in  his  regi 
ments.  But  the  Druses  were  much  opposed  to  military 
service,  and  sought  for  means  whereby  to  avoid  it.     The  only 


Syria  and  Palestine  193 

sure  way  seemed  to  be  that  they  should  become  Christians,  at 
any  rate  in  name.  On  no  account  would  they  attach  them- 
selves to  the  Roman  Church,  for  the  Roman  Maronites  had 
ever  been  their  bitterest  enemies.  And  the  Roman  priests 
were  hated  in  Syria.  So  they  hit  upon  the  device  of  becoming 
Protestants.  Naturally  they  did  not  explain  their  motives  to 
the  missionaries,  else  they  would  have  met  with  no  encourage- 
ment whatever.  A  remarkable  experience  now  began  for  the 
Americans.  Hardly  a  day  passed  but  a  deputation  from  some 
Druse  sheikh  sought  an  interview.  Some  asked  that  they 
should  be  visited  by  a  missionary,  others  wanted  a  day-school 
or  a  catechist  in  their  village,  and  others  again  asked  for  the 
establishment  of  a  higher  school  for  the  sons  of  the  nobility. 
The  movement  extended  further  and  further,  deputations  ap- 
pearing even  from  the  valleys  of  Anti-Lebanon.  Had  the  mis- 
sionaries complied  with  all  these  requests  without  more  ado,  a 
great  portion  of  the  Druses,  perhaps  even  the  whole  tribe, 
would  have  become  Protestant,  in  name  at  least.  But  the 
Americans  looked  askance  at  conversions  en  masse.  They 
would  not  barter  the  sacredness  of  their  religion  for  a  mere 
increase  in  numbers.  Yery  shyly  and  shrinkingly  they 
listened  to  the  importunate  Druses,  establishing  a  school  for 
the  sons  of  Druse  chiefs,  and  opening  village  schools  here  and 
there,  while  they  themselves  went  preaching  through  the 
country.  But  they  would  baptize  only  such  people  as  had 
been  thoroughly  prepared,  and  had  passed  through  a  time  of 
probation.  It  is  difficult  to  say  what  this  movement  might 
have  led  to,  had  not  the  Turks  put  an  end  to  it  with  a  strong 
hand.  In  1842  an  army  marched  into  the  Druse  districts,  oc- 
cupying all  the  villages  and  forcing  all  the  sheikhs,  under 
threats  of  direst  punishment,  to  promise  solemnly  that  neither 
they  nor  their  villages  would  ever  forsake  Islam  for  Protes- 
tantism. Thus  an  insurmountable  wall  was  built  up  between 
the  Druses  and  the  mission.  Yet  the  Druses  remained  the 
friends  of  the  missionaries,  and  have  often  shielded  them  in 
times  of  danger. 
There  came  a  time  when  the  results  of  the  patient  work  of 


194     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  missionaries  began  to  appear.  One  after  another  the 
Syrians  had  joined  them  in  the  early  years.  But  the  Prot- 
estant leaven  began  to  work  more  vigorously.  Now  here, 
now  there,  a  family,  a  group  of  families,  or  a  whole  village, 
was  inclined  to  break  away  from  the  ancient  Church,  and  to 
become  Protestant.  In  one  village,  up  in  the  mountains,  the 
priest  said  mass  for  the  last  time,  and  then,  leaving  the  church 
along  with  his  congregation,  locked  the  door  and  threw  the 
key  away,  declaring  that  he  would  become  Protestant,  as  he 
could  not  reconcile  it  with  his  conscience  to  say  mass.  In  the 
large  village  of  Hasbeiya  those  who  wished  to  become  Prot- 
estants assembled  one  Sunday,  after  the  service,  around  the 
missionary,  and  solemnly  declared  that  those  who  had  signed 
their  names  bound  themselves  in  the  sight  of  God,  and 
before  that  assembly,  to  hold  together  in  one  faith,  and  to 
worship  God  according  to  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel.  Each 
took  this  oath  standing,  and  with  his  hand  on  the  Bible.  In 
Ain  Zehalty,  every  one  who  was  not  a  Druse  was  reckoned  as 
a  Protestant ;  in  Alma,  the  home  of  Asad  Shidiak,  the  martyr, 
a  Protestant  congregation  was  formed ;  in  Kana,  to  the  east 
of  Tyre,  all,  young  and  old,  expressed  a  desire  to  be  instructed 
in  the  Word  of  God.  From  Aintab  and  Haleb  in  the  North, 
from  Hamath  and  Horns  in  the  East,  and  from  as  far  as  Lake 
Merom  in  the  South,  requests  came  for  teachers,  schools. 
Bibles,  religious  instruction  and  assistance  in  forming  Prot- 
estant congregations.  The  missionary  map  of  Syria  became 
covered  with  red  dots,  signifying  hopeful  villages  and  dis- 
tricts. The  missionaries  would  have  needed  to  multiply  them- 
selves many  times  to  meet  all  these  requests.  At  first  they 
had  dwelt  together  in  Beirut,  but  now  they  were  obliged  to 
scatter  over  the  entire  country.  This  was  more  easy  to  do  in 
Syria  than  in  other  mission  fields,  for  the  reason  that  the 
Syrian  houses,  being  solidly  built  of  stone,  could,  without 
much  trouble,  be  turned  into  dwellings  for  the  missionaries. 
Consequently  we  find,  temporarily,  missionaries  in  Abeih, 
Deir  el  Kamr,  Sidon  and  Suk  el  Gharb  in  the  South  ;  and, 
to  the  North,  in  Horns,  Hamath,  Aleppo  and  Tripoli.     Sad  to 


Syria  and  Palestine  ic^^- 

say,  there  were  not  sufficient  missionaries  to  enter  all  the 
open  doors.  This  was  the  more  regrettable,  as  the  Roman 
and  Greek  opponents  of  the  mission  left  no  stone  unturned  to 
hamper  the  Protestant  cause,  and  to  intimidate  Protestant 
converts.  In  almost  every  town  and  village  there  had  to  be 
a  severe  contest  before  those  of  the  ancient  faith  would  tolerate 
the  Protestants.  To  give  one  example  of  such  conflicts,  we 
single  out  Safita,'  a  village  to  the  north  of  Tripoli.  It  was 
in  the  first  instance  secular  reasons  that  induced  a  great 
part  of  the  villagers  to  go  over  to  the  Protestant  Church. 
They  were  sorely  pressed  by  the  cruel  Turkish  tax-gatherers, 
and  hoped  to  be  secured  against  injustice  by  taking  this  step. 
But  they  had  reckoned  without  their  host,  for  the  Greek  Bishop 
bribed  the  Turks  to  drive  the  people  out  of  their  houses,  to  break 
all  that  could  be  broken,  to  consume  all  that  was  eatable,  and 
to  deliver  the  women  over  to  the  will  of  the  Turkish  soldiers. 
The  unfortunate  people  started  in  a  body  to  seek  help  from 
the  chief  magistrate  of  Tripoli.  When  he  refused  they  turned 
to  the  governor  in  Damascus.  By  the  latter  they  were  kindly 
received,  and  were  sent  home  laden  with  promises  of  a  re- 
assuring character.  But,  when  harvest-time  approached,  the 
trouble  began  again.  Their  wheat-fields  were  ploughed  up  by 
their  enemies,  their  olive  orchards  were  secretly  plundered ; 
wherever  a  Protestant  was  met,  unaccompanied,  he  was  half 
killed.  The  Muharamadan  governor  was  bribed  to  extermi- 
nate this  "  abominable  sect,"  and  he  was  willing  enough  to  do 
so.  As  if  that  were  not  enough,  every  Protestant,  man, 
woman  and  child,  in  Safita  was  seized  in  the  depth  of  winter, 
all  being  cast  together  into  a  narrow  room.  To  torture  them 
still  more,  straw  was  set  on  fire,  producing  a  fearfully  suffo- 
cating smoke.  After  that,  they  were  set  free,  but  while 
they  were  assembled  at  evening  service,  Turkish  horsemen 
broke  into  their  houses,  plundering  them,  and  when  the  Prot- 
estants came  home,  all,  both  old  and  young,  were  driven  out 
into  the  night.     It  was  marvellous  in  the  eyes  of  the  mission- 

*  It  is  one  of  the  chief  places  of  the  Nusairiyeh,  and  was  formerly  the  seat  of 
their  hereditary  sheikh. 


196     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

aries  that,  under  such  pressure,  they  did  not  all  return  to  the 
Greek  Church,  especially  as  their  persecutors  held  out  the  dis- 
tinct promise  that  their  sufferings  should  cease,  as  soon  as 
they  abjured  Protestantism.  Yet  a  number,  at  least,  of  these 
sorely  tried  people  remained  faithful,  attaching  themselves  all 
the  closer  to  the  missionaries,  and  growing  in  grace  in  the 
furnace  of  affliction.  The  only  help  in  such  and  similar  trials 
was  for  the  missionaries  to  apply  to  the  British  and  American 
consuls  for  protection,  and  thereby  to  exercise  pressure  on  the 
governor  of  Damascus.  It  would  seem  that  in  Syria  the 
opposition  to  the  mission  is  more  stubborn  and  malignant 
than  in  Armenia,  a  fact  which  is  probably  to  be  explained  by 
the  greater  influence  exercised  by  the  Koman  Church  in  Syria. 
This  is  the  reason  why  a  larger  and  more  connected  movement 
in  the  direction  of  Protestantism  has  never  come  about. 
There  have  been  only  small  groups  of  converts  here  and  there. 
During  these  years  the  missionaries  in  Beirut  had  com- 
pleted the  translation  of  the  Bible  into  Arabic,  a  work  of  im- 
portance, not  only  for  Syria,  but  also  for  all  other  Arabic- 
speaking  countries.  Portions  of  the  Bible  had  already  been 
translated  into  Arabic,  but  these  were  neither  sufficiently 
accurate,  nor  were  they  of  an  idiomatic  and  flowing  style. 
Arabic  is  one  of  the  most  delicate,  many-sided,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  difficult  languages,  to  be  master  of  which  demands 
an  uncommon  measure  of  linguistic  talent  and  untiring  study. 
Educated  Arabs  are  very  sensitive  about  an  imperfect  use  of 
their  beautiful  language,  and  are,  accordingly,  prejudiced 
against  a  faulty  translation.  Two  of  the  most  able  American 
missionaries.  Dr.  Eli  Smith  and  Dr.  Van  Dyck,  each  spent 
eight  years  over  their  great  undertaking,  the  former  being 
snatched  from  his  work  by  cholera  on  the  11th  of  January, 
185Y.  The  Rev.  Eli  Smith,  D.  D.,  was  one  of  the  most  promi- 
nent of  the  Syrian  missionaries.  Born  in  1801,  he  was  sent 
in  1824  to  Malta  and  Beirut,  especially  to  superintend  the 
printing  establishment,  and  this  remained  until  his  death  the 
centre  of  his  activity.  For  decades  there  was  hardly  a  man- 
uscript printed  here  that  he  had  not  thoroughly  revised  and 


Syria  and  Palestine  197 

seen  through  the  press.  He  was  a  thorough  expert  in  all 
oriental  matters,  and  a  diligent  student.  In  1830  and  1831, 
as  we  have  already  said,  he,  with  his  colleague,  Rev.  Wm. 
Goodell,  D.  D.,  undertook  the  now  famous  exploration  of 
Eastern  Asia  Minor  and  Transcaucasia,  which  is  described  in 
that  much-read  book  "  Christian  Researches  in  Armenia " 
(2  vols.).  In  1837,  1838  and  1852  he  accompanied  Dr.  Robin- 
son, the  explorer  of  Palestine,  on  his  pioneering  journey  of 
exploration.  But  his  great  achievement  was  his  Arabic 
translation  of  the  New  Testament,  the  Pentateuch  and  some 
of  the  Prophetic  Books.  His  Arab  assistant  in  this  work  was 
the  Maronite  convert,  Butros  Bistany,  perhaps  the  most 
learned,  industrious  and  successful,  as  well  as  the  most  in- 
fluential man  of  modern  Syria.  He  has  himself  written 
several  large  works  in  Arabic,  and  was  a  tower  of  strength  to 
the  Protestant  Church  in  Beirut,  until  his  death  in  1883. 

The  Rev.  C.  V.  A.  Van  Dyck,  M.  D.,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  was 
sent  out  as  a  medical  missionary,  and  was  so  highly  prized  as 
such,  that  the  Orthodox  Greeks  were  glad  to  ask  his  frequent 
help  in  their  St.  George's  hospital  in  Beirut,  and  that,  after 
his  death,  they  erected  a  monument  in  his  honour,  a  remark- 
able testimony  of  gratitude  on  the  part  of  a  Church  that  saw 
in  the  Americans  dangerous  rivals.  After  Dr.  Eli  Smith's 
death.  Dr.  Van  Dyck  undertook  the  task  of  Bible  translation, 
with  the  assistance  of  the  mufti.  Sheikh  Yusuf  Asir,  a  gradu- 
ate of  the  Azhar  University  in  Cairo,  completing  it  after 
eight  years  of  most  strenuous  work.  On  the  10th  of  March, 
1865,  the  completion  of  this  monumental  work  was  celebrated 
in  a  thanksgiving  service  in  Beirut.  Directly  after  this.  Dr. 
Van  Dyck  returned  home  to  have  the  Arabic  version  electro- 
typed  in  New  York.  Duplicate  plates  of  this  then  very 
costly  edition  were  deposited  with  the  Bible  Societies  in  New 
York  and  London,  and  in  the  vaults  of  the  American  press. 
This  Arabic  translation  is,  in  the  opinion  of  experts,  a  master- 
piece, and  one  of  the  best  translations  of  the  Bible  in  our 
times.  It  has  since  been  one  of  the  most  important  mission- 
ary agencies  in  Syria  and  far  beyond,  to  Morocco  in  the  West 


198     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

and  to  Khartum  in  the  South,  in  Arabia,  Persia,  North  and 
South  India,  in  fact  in  all  Muhammadan  countries  in  which 
Arabic  is  spoken  and  understood.  In  1837  the  Mejlis  el 
Maarif,  or  Board  of  Public  Instruction  of  the  Sultan,  placed 
the  seal  of  authorization  upon  thirty-three  different  editions 
of  the  Arabic  Bible  and  portions  of  the  Bible.  Dr.  Yan 
Dyck  died  on  the  13th  of  November,  1895,  in  Beirut,  at  the 
age  of  seventy-seven. 

Among  the  American  missionaries  of  this  period,  mention 
must  be  made  of  the  learned  Rev.  Wm.  M,  Thomson,  D.  D., 
the  celebrated  explorer  of  Palestine,  who  gave  the  results  of 
his  comprehensive  and  careful  studies  in  "  The  Land  and  the 
Book,"  one  of  the  most  read  books  in  America,  treating  of 
the  Holy  Land.  He  continued  for  fifty  years  his  work  as  a 
missionary  in  Syria,  retiring  in  1877.  He  died  in  Denver, 
Colorado,  on  the  8th  of  April,  1894,  aged  eighty-nine  years. 
Dr.  W.  W.  Eddy  devoted  himself  chiefly  to  the  training  of 
teachers,  opening  a  theological  seminary  in  Abeih,  which  he 
subsequently  removed  to  Beirut  in  1873.  He  died  in  1900  in 
Beirut,  at  the  age  of  seventy-eight. 

The  rebellion  of  the  Druses  in  1860  is  a  tragic  episode 
in  the  history  of  the  Syrian  Mission.  It  was  again  the 
fault  of  the  Maronites.  In  spite  of  the. defeats  they  had 
suffered  in  1842  and  1845,  they  were  still  eager  to  fight, 
hoping  thoroughly  to  humble  their  hated  neighbours.  With- 
out any  cause  they  fell  upon  several  Druse  villages,  but 
the  Druses  rose  up  against  them  as  one  man,  being  en- 
couraged and  supported  also  in  the  work  of  slaughter 
by  the  Turks,  who  held  that  a  little  blood-letting  was  good 
for  these  Christians,  who  were  becoming  too  powerful  and 
numerous.  Soon  the  mountains  and  valleys  of  Southern 
Lebanon  were  resounding  with  the  cries  of  agony  and  death, 
uttered  by  the  unhappy  Maronites,  whose  men  and  growing 
boys  were  mercilessly  slaughtered,  while  the  women  fled 
helplessly  down  to  the  seacoast  to  seek  protection  in  Beirut 
and  Sidon.  In  the  valley  of  Coele-Syria,  between  Lebanon 
and   Anti-Lebanon,  more  than   a  thousand  Maronites  were 


Syria  and  Palestine  199 

killed,  the  worst  work  being  done  in  the  Christian  quarter  of 
Damascus.  On  the  9th  of  July  the  Druses,  assisted  by  Kurds 
and  Arabs,  rushed  like  a  pack  of  famished  wolves  upon  the 
Christians  there,  plundering  and  burning  their  houses  for 
four  or  five  days.  Five  thousand  Christians  are  said  to  have 
been  mercilessly  massacred  by  these  savages.  And  the  Turkish 
authorities  looked  on  with  arms  folded,  not  moving  a  finger  to 
stop  the  carnage.  What  did  it  amount  to,  that,  afterwards, 
when  the  powers,  intervening  for  the  defense  of  the  Christians, 
collected  a  fleet  off  the  Syrian  coast,  the  Grand  Yizier  in- 
flicted fearful  punishment  on  one  or  two  hundred  of  the 
malefactors  in  Damascus  ?  It  is  impossible  to  say  how  great 
the  number  of  the  victims  was.  As  usual  in  such  cases,  it 
was  to  the  advantage  of  the  Turks  to  state  the  smallest  pos- 
sible number,  and  they  scorned  the  assumption  that  more 
than  a  few  hundred,  or  at  most  a  thousand,  had  been  massa- 
cred. On  the  other  hand  the  Maronites  and  their  Komish 
friends  enormously  exaggerated  the  losses,  reporting  30,000, 
or  more,  as  having  been  murdered.  Probably  about  14,000 
Maronites,  Melchites  and  Greeks^  lost  their  lives.  It  is 
worthy  of  notice  that  the  Protestants  were,  in  the  main,  not 
involved  in  these  massacres.  Only  in  Hasbeiya  did  they  vol- 
untarily join  the  Maronites  and  Greeks,  whereupon  they  suf- 
fered greatly.  That  Protestants  elsewhere  were  left  for  the 
most  part  in  peace,  is  a  clear  proof  that  it  was  not  mainly  a 
religious  struggle,  but  a  feud  between  hereditary  enemies,  the 
Druses  and  the  Maronites. 

The  suffering  in  the  devastated  districts  was  boundless,  the 
villages  having  been  plundered,  the  houses  burned  down,  the 
plantations  destroyed.  By  hundreds  and  thousands  the  help- 
less and  defenseless  widows  and  orphans  crowded  together  on 
the  coast.  A  cry  of  indignation  resounded  throughout  Chris- 
tian Europe  that  Turkey  should  permit  such  inhuman 
slaughter  to  take  place  at  her  very  gates.     Pity  for  the  victims 

*  Canon  Tristram,  in  "Daughters  of  Syria,"  estimates  the  number  of  the 
killed  at  11,000;  of  those  who  perished  from  want,  at  4,000;  of  widows  and 
orphans,  at  20,000;  of  ruined  houses,  at  3,000. 


200     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

filled  all  hearts.  It  was  the  American  missionaries  who 
proved  to  be  the  chief  benefactors  of  the  afflicted  people, 
knowing,  as  they  did,  land  and  people  most  intimately,  and 
having  also  trustworthy  acquaintances  in  all  the  villages.  In 
their  hands  English,  American  and  German  friends  placed 
about  £40,000,  and  they  hastened  through  the  country,  like 
Good  Samaritans.  They  supplied  the  hungry  with  food,  the 
naked  with  clothing,  the  houseless  with  shelter,  the  sick  and 
wounded  with  medicine  and  nursing. 

This  unselfish  exhibition  of  Christian  charity  on  the  part  of 
the  Protestants  did  not  make  any  deep  or  lasting  impression 
upon  the  Maronites,  who  were  too  much  under  the  influence 
of  the  repellent  spirit  of  their  Jesuitical  leaders.  While  they 
accepted  the  benefits,  they  remained  unchanged  in  heart. 
The  Christian  Powers,  however,  as  a  result  of  this  outbreak, 
insisted  on  the  appointment  of  a  special  Christian  governor 
for  the  Lebanon.  Accordingly  the  mutessariflik  of  Lebanon 
was  separated  from  the  vilayet  of  Beirut.  It  comprises  the 
seacoast  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Sidon  to  Tripoli,  with  the 
exception  of  the  town  of  Beirut,  which,  with  Galilee  and  the 
southern  half  of  Phoenicia,  still  belongs  to  the  vilayet,  and  the 
Lebanon  range  as  far  as  Bekaa  (Coele-Syria),  a  part  of  the 
country  that  is  especially  inhabited  by  Christians.  Here 
dwell  the  most  of  the  Maronites,  from  30,000  to  40,000 
Melchites,  20,000  to  30,000  Orthodox  Greeks  and  3,000  Prot- 
estant Syrians,  there  being  about  60,000  Muhammadans, 
Druses  and  Metawileh.  In  accord  with  the  numerical  superi- 
ority of  the  Roman  Church,  the  Pasha  is  always  a  Roman 
Christian,  either  a  Maronite  or  aMelchite.  This  new  arrange- 
ment has  proved  to  be  very  beneficial  to  the  country, 
especially  as  most  of  the  governors  have  endeavoured  to  be 
impartial,  and  to  protect  all  the  Christian  congregations.  It 
is  probably  owing  to  this  that,  since  1860,  more  and  more 
Druses  have  been  emigrating  to  the  Hauran,  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Christians  proving  too  disagreeable.  Consequently 
comparative  order  has  since  then  reigned  in  Syria.  As  Chris- 
tians, the  inhabitants  are  exempt  from  military  service,  the 


Syria  and  Palestine  2oi 

Druses  also  having  had  this  freedom  granted  them.  A  cer- 
tain amount  of  free  speech  and  freedom  of  the  press  is  allowed, 
subject  to  the  argus  eyes  of  the  censor.  The  people  have 
their  own  ecclesiastical  courts  of  justice,  in  which  minor  law- 
suits, especially  such  as  deal  with  questions  of  inheritance, 
may  be  settled.  The  buying  and  selling  of  land  are  not  so 
senselessly  diificult  as  in  other  parts  of  Turkey.  The  district 
enjoys  a  certain  reduction  of  taxation.  The  solidly  built 
houses,  with  their  roofs  of  red  tiles,  standing  in  the  midst  of 
green  gardens  and  plantations,  are  in  marked  contrast  with 
those  of  the  poverty-stricken  villages  in  other  districts. 

2.  The  Entrance  of  Other  Missionary  Societies 
The  news  of  the  massacres  excited  intense  sympathy  in  the 
whole  of  the  Christian  world.  Able  representatives  of  the  cause 
succeeded  in  deepening  the  momentary  feeling  of  pity  into  per- 
manent support.  In  this  way  the  year  1860  opened  a  new 
chapter  in  the  history  of  Protestant  endeavour  in  the  Near  East. 
Apart  from  the  work  of  Bishop  Gobat  in  Jerusalem,  no  single 
event  prior  to  the  Armenian  horrors  in  1895  and  1896  proved 
to  be  such  an  incentive  to  the  active  cooperation  of  Protestants 
in  the  evangelization  of  this  part  of  the  world.  It  is  a  re- 
markable fact  that  hardly  any  of  the  great  missionary 
societies,  existing  at  that  time  in  Europe,  undertook  work  in 
Syria.  The  work  was  undertaken,  rather,  by  smaller  societies, 
founded  specially  for  this  purpose,  or  by  independent  mission- 
aries. Neither  in  England,  Scotland  nor  Germany  did  the 
mission  work  in  the  Near  East  immediately  appeal  to  the 
Christian  public,  nor  did  it  there  find  such  general  apprecia- 
tion and  support  as  in  Congregational  and  Presbyterian  circles 
in  America.  This  is  the  secret  of  the  fact  that  these  new 
missionary  agencies  have  accomplished  no  single  great  end, 
but  have  expended  their  energies  on  minor  endeavours.  Their 
united  forces  were  hardly  equal  to  that  of  the  American 
Board  or  of  the  Presbyterian  Mission  of  a  later  date.  A 
characteristic  common  to  these  smaller  undertakings  is  that 
they  did  not  aim  at  the  formation  of  congregations.    When 


202     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

their  labours  resulted  in  conversions  to  Protestantism,  their 
converts,  if  they  did  not  remain  in  the  service  of  the  mission, 
joined  the  congregations  established  by  the  Americans.  But 
there  were  never  many  such  converts,  and  the  influence  of 
these  missions  has  been  in  general  small. 

For  convenience  we  will  make  mention  of  all  these  smaller 
missions  in  Syria  at  this  point,  though  some  of  them  were 
begun  before  1860. 

(a)  Two  German  societies  were  among  the  newcomers. 
One  of  these  was  the  Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses'  Homes. 
Affected  by  the  terrible  news  from  Syria,  Pastor  Disselhoff, 
the  son-in-law  of  the  Eev.  T.  H.  Fliedner,  the  founder  of  the 
society,  received  130  girls  into  an  orphanage  called  Zoar. 
As  Fliedner's  bold  example  found  an  echo  in  German  hearts, 
he  finally  decided  to  make  this  orphanage  a  permanent 
institution  for  training  Syrian  girls,  Maronites,  Greeks  and 
Druses — instruction  being  given  in  four  classes,  by  nine 
deaconesses.  Soon  after  the  establishment  of  Zoar,  Fliedner, 
influenced  by  the  experience  of  the  deaconesses  in  Smyrna, 
began  on  the  same  premises  an  advanced  school  for  the  older 
daughters  of  the  more  well-to-do  Syrian  families.  This 
boarding-school  has  been  maintained  in  the  face  of  financial 
difficulties,  and  now  numbers  seventeen  boarders  and  143  day 
scholars.  Both  these  institutions  form  a  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  the  training  of  women,  which  had  been  so  long 
neglected  in  the  Near  East. 

In  Beirut  also  in  1861,  the  Prussian  Order  of  St.  John 
founded  a  hospital,  beautifully  situated  in  the  midst  of  a 
charming  garden.  The  doctors  and  professors  of  the  Syrian 
Protestant  College  undertook  the  medical  charge  of  the 
hospital,  and  the  Kaiserswerth  deaconesses  did  the  nursing, 
while  the  Order  made  itself  responsible  for  the  considerable 
expense  entailed.  For  forty-seven  years  this  well-conducted 
Protestant  hospital,  with  its  eighty-three  beds,  has  been  the 
only  large  Protestant  institution  of  its  kind  in  Beirut.  Over 
700  in-patients  and  15,000  out-patients  are  treated  annually. 

(5)    Various  British  societies  also  began  mission  work  in 


Syria  and  Palestine  203 

Syria.  In  1854  and  1855,  Dr.  Bowen  Thompson,  a  man  of 
wealth,  had,  with  his  wife's  assistance,  been  doing  evangelistic 
work  in  Antioch,  where  he  had  won  many  hearts.  At  the 
same  time  Mentor  Mott,  his  brother-in-law,  was  working  with 
his  wife  in  Southern  Syria.  Dr.  Thompson,  while  serving  as 
a  doctor  in  the  British  army  in  the  Crimean  "War,  fell  a 
victim  to  hospital  fever.  But  his  widow  decided  to  devote 
her  life  and  means  to  the  service  of  Syria  along  with  the 
Motts.  The  massacres  of  1860  pointed  out  a  way  to  them. 
They  established  girls'  schools,  first  in  Beirut,  then  also  in 
Damascus,  Zahleh,  Baalbek,  Sidon  and  Tripoli.  These  schools 
were  at  first  maintained  at  the  cost  of  Mrs.  Thompson,  but, 
after  her  death  on  the  14th  of  November,  1870,  a  well-supported 
English  society  furnished  her  sister,  Mrs.  Mott,  with  a  yearly 
contribution  of  £9,000.  With  this  considerable  sum,  presu- 
mably the  largest  that  is  at  the  disposal  of  any  single  mission 
in  Syria,  save  that  of  the  Presbyterian  Board,  a  network  of 
girls'  schools  was  spread  over  Syria,  so  that  in  1902  there 
were  fifty-six  of  them  with  a  total  of  4,262  pupils.  The 
three  most  important  girls'  boarding-schools  are  at  Beirut, 
Hasbeiya  and  Tyre.  The  personnel  of  the  mission  consists  of 
one  medical  missionary,  twenty  lady  missionaries,  and  128 
Syrian  female  teachers.  The  society  has  had  regard  for  the 
blind  also,  and  has  had  Smith's  and  Yan  Dyck's  Arabic  Bible 
prepared  for  them.  As  Prince  of  Wales,  King  Edward  VII 
interested  himself  in  these  schools,  and  induced  the  Sultan 
to  issue  a  firman,  permitting  the  society  to  establish  schools 
all  over  Syria.  The  Sultan,  in  recognition  of  her  services, 
himself  presented  Mrs.  Thompson  before  her  death  with  a 
village  near  Baalbek,  which  was  to  help  maintain  her  work. 
This  work  has,  apart  from  the  establishment  of  schools, 
branched  out  into  other  forms  of  quiet  mission  endeavour. 
It  employs  twenty-five  Bible-women  to  read  the  Scriptures  to 
women  and  children  in  the  villages,  and  to  impart  elementary 
knowledge  of  Gospel  truth.  In  Beirut  it  maintains  an 
"Institute"  for  training  native  female  teachers  and  Bible- 
women.     There  are  seventy  students.     Medical  work  is  done 


204     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

to  a  modest  extent,  and  without  charges,  mostly  by  means  of 
dispensaries,  in  Beirut,  Damascus,  Baalbek  and  Tyre. 

English  "  Friends,"  who,  though  few  in  numbers,  are  spirit- 
ually strong  and  zealous  in  mission  work  (Leslie :  "  The 
Story  of  the  Friends'  Work  in  Syria  "),  also  took  up  work  in 
Syria,  individual  men  and  women  acting  more  or  less  as 
volunteers,  at  their  own  charges.  As  might  be  expected 
from  the  loose  organization  of  the  Friends,  their  mission 
work  abroad  was  slow  to  take  on  the  centralized  organization 
of  a  mission  directed  by  a  committee  of  management  at 
home.  The  first  introduction  of  a  general  plan  took  place 
after  the  visitation  conducted  by  Watson  Grace,  a  young 
mission  secretary,  who  died  soon  afterwards,  in  1901.  The 
Friends  chose  the  airy,  high-lying  village  of  Brummana,  to  the 
southeast  of  Beirut,  on  the  slopes  of  the  Lebanon,  for  their 
headquarters.  Here  they  opened  advanced  boarding-schools 
for  boys  and  girls,  these  being  gradually  followed  by  fifteen 
village  schools,  so  that  now  the  mission  has  about  1,300 
pupils  altogether.  Later  on  medical  mission  work  was  begun, 
and  a  hospital  established  in  Brummana,  which  has  been  several 
times  enlarged.  It  was  superintended  by  two  well-qualified 
Syrian  doctors,  who  had,  however,  English  nurses  under 
them.  Four  Bible-women  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  mountain 
villages  of  the  Maronites  and  Druses.  The  Friends  have 
formed  among  the  Syrians  a  community  after  their  own 
pattern,  but  there  are  only  eighty-two  adult  members.  Since 
1890  some  out-stations  round  Brummana  have  been  supplied 
with  missionaries,  e.  g.,  Ras  el  Metn,  in  1890,  Beit  Meri, 
about  half  an  hour's  walk  from  Brummana,  in  1898,  and 
Abadije,  in  1899.  This  has  been  done  chiefly  for  the  sake  of 
the  better  supervision  and  guidance  of  the  ever-extending 
work  of  the  village  schools  and  the  Bible-women.  This 
mission  has  generally  a  staff  of  four  married  missionaries,  and 
from  five  to  seven  lady  missionaries. 

There  has  been  latterly  an  interesting  offshoot  of  this  work. 
A  former  missionary  in  Abyssinia,  Theophilus  Waldraeyer, 
who  afterwards  entered  the  Friends'  Mission  in  Brummana,  had 


Syria  and  Palestine  205 

set  his  heart  on  ministering  to  the  wants  of  the  numerous  in- 
sane, who  were  being  cruelly  treated  by  their  ignorant  neigh- 
bours. With  the  assistance  of  a  committee,  which  worked  in 
England,  America  and  Germany,  one  building  after  another 
was  erected  on  a  suitable  plot  of  ground,  that  had  been  ac- 
quired about  three  miles  from  Beirut,  in  the  village  of  Asfurie. 
A  doctor  was  placed  in  charge,  with  several  male  and  female 
nurses  under  him,  and  the  asylum  was  opened  in  1900,  the 
only  institution  of  the  kind  on  modern  lines  in  Syria,  and  a 
great  boon  to  its  unfortunate  inmates. 

Four  of  the  most  prominent  Scottish  clergymen,  amongst 
them  Andrew  Bonar  and  McCheyne,  were  sent  to  make  en- 
quiries in  Syria  with  a  view  to  establishing  there  a  Protestant 
Mission.  At  first  nothing  came  of  this.  But  in  1860,  the 
year  of  terror,  the  Scotch  were  by  no  means  behind  others. 
Under  the  influence  of  the  massacres,  a  Lebanon  School 
Association  was  formed,  which  soon  established  nine  schools, 
in  which  about  500  boys  and  girls  were  gathered.  The  Free 
Church  of  Scotland  had,  as  early  as  1853,  a  group  of  fifteen 
village  schools.  For  their  better  management,  a  main  station 
was  founded  in  1872  at  Shuweir,  to  the  east  of  Beirut,  where 
a  married,  ordained  missionary,  who  also  acted  as  doctor,  was 
placed.  The  chief  branches  of  this  quiet  work  were  an  ex- 
tensive medical  practice  connected  with  a  dispensary,  and  a 
boarding-school  for  boys  at  Shuweir,  which  prepared  for  the 
college  in  Beirut.  Dr.  Carslaw  was  at  the  head  of  all  this 
work.  Latterly  both  of  these  Scottish  efforts  have  been 
amalgamated  with  the  larger  cognate  work  of  the  American 
Presbyterians.  With  characteristic  magnanimity  the  Free 
Church  continues  to  provide  the  salary  of  the  missionary,  now 
working  under  American  management. 

The  Druses  have  frequently  attracted  the  attention  of 
friends  of  missionary  work.  The  interesting  connection  of 
the  American  Board  with  this  remarkable  race  has  already 
been  mentioned.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  also  once 
came  into  touch  with  the  Druses  in  connection  with  their  Pal- 
estine mission,  that  is  to  say,  with  that  portion  of  the  Druses 


2o6     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

which  had  emigrated  to  the  Lejah  (Argob,  Trachonitis,  or 
Jebel  ed  Drus).  In  1876  they  took  over  five  schools  for  Druse 
children  in  Ezra,  Lahiteh,  Kunawat,  Atil  and  Kharaba,  schools 
which  had  been  established  in  connection  with  the  work  in 
Damascus  (cf.  Rev.  Mr.  Bellamy's  report  on  his  journey  and 
visitation.  Intelligencer,  1881,  p.  81  ff.).  These  schools  were 
well  attended.  The  Druses  were  ambitious  to  make  as  great 
progress  as  was  being  made  by  Oriental  Christians  under 
missionary  influence.  Hence  they  desired  to  have  English 
schools.  They  had  no  thought  of  becoming  Christians  ;  indeed 
the  older  people  still  held  aloof  even  from  the  schools.  When, 
in  1885,  the  Turkish  government  struck  what  it  hoped  would 
be  a  death-blow  to  the  schools  of  the  Protestant  Mission,  by 
forbidding,  under  pain  of  punishment,  the  attendance  of  Mu- 
hammadan  children,  the  Druse  schools  fell  as  the  first  victims. 
Nor  did  the  Church  Missionary  Society  ever  resuscitate  them. 
In  1865  Miss  Wordsworth  Smith  felt  herself  drawn  to  work 
among  the  western  branch  of  the  Druses,  in  the  village  of 
Baaklin,  which  lies  to  the  south  of  Deir  el  Kamr,  the  former 
seat  of  the  Emir  of  the  Druses.  Succeeding  in  arousing  the 
interest  of  a  small  circle  of  English  friends,  she  was  able  to 
begin  a  nurses'  mission  among  the  Druses  of  the  Lebanon, 
which  extended  its  work  later,  under  the  name  of  "  The  Pal- 
estine and  Lebanon  Nurses'  Mission."  Its  staff  consists  of  one 
doctor  and  three  lady  missionaries.  Their  hospital  at  Baaklin 
has  an  annual  income  of  about  £400.  Another  English  lady, 
Miss  Louisa  Procter,  has,  since  1885,  opened  on  her  own  ac- 
count several  boarding-schools  in  Shuweifat,  to  the  south  of 
Beirut,  and  in  connection  with  them  maintains  a  medical  mis- 
sion. In  1905  she  handed  over  her  institutions  to  a  committee, 
which  she  herself  appointed,  in  order  to  secure  their  contin- 
uance after  her  death.  Miss  Juliana  Williams  provided  a 
girls'  school  in  the  isolated  village  of  Kuifun,  near  Shumlan. 
This  school  was  at  first  connected  with  the  independent  mission 
of  a  wealthy  English  clergyman,  Eev.  T.  H.  Worsley ;  after 
the  abandonment  of  the  latter,  it  was,  however,  continued. 
In  Baaklin,  the  chief  village  of  the  Druses  in  the  Lebanon,  a 


Syria  and  Palestine  207 

girls'  school  (106  pupils)  was  founded  in  memory  of  Rev.  John 
Wilson,  a  warm  friend  of  the  Holy  Land.  This  institution 
came  afterwards  under  the  management  of  the  American 
Presbyterian  Mission,  though  it  still  enjoyed  its  private  sources 
of  income.  With  Safed  in  the  north  of  Galilee  as  a  centre  of 
operations,  an  American  lady.  Miss  Ford,  began  work  among 
the  Druses  of  the  Hauran.  She  is  said  to  have  found  many 
open  doors  for  her  work,  which  she  subsequently  requested 
the  Presbyterian  Mission  to  take  over.  As  a  result,  there  are 
now  two  small  Protestant  congregations  in  Kharabeh  and 
Khasfin,  A  Scottish  lady.  Miss  Taylor,  began  an  unpreten- 
tious work  in  1868,  with  a  dispensary,  a  girls'  orphanage,  vil- 
lage schools  and  visitation  of  the  harems.  She  died  on  the  6th 
of  January,  1907,  but  her  work  is  still  being  carried  on.  The 
Established  Church  of  Scotland  has  also  a  Jewish  mission 
station  in  Beirut,  with  well-attended  boys'  and  girls'  schools. 
In  Kafr  Shima,  a  Swiss  lady.  Miss  Appia,  is  doing  independent 
work. 

Damascus,  the  ancient  capital  of  Syria,  lies  beautifully  situ- 
ated in  an  extraordinarily  fertile  and  well-watered  plain.  Its 
population  is  about  154,000.  Of  this  population  33,000  were 
Christians  in  1860,  the  year  of  misfortune, — Greeks,  Jacobites 
and  "  united  "  Roman  Catholics.  After  the  massacre,  a  great 
portion  of  these  were  dispersed,  fearing  the  effects  of  a  par- 
ticularly sensitive  fanaticism,  prevalent  at  that  time  in  Da- 
mascus. Thus  the  number  of  Christians  dwindled  down  to 
ten  or  fifteen  thousand,  and  only  slowly  is  their  number  ap- 
proaching the  former  figures.  There  are  also  about  8,000 
Jews  in  Damascus. 

In  1843  the  Irish  Presbyterians,  conjointly  with  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  sent  a  deputation  consisting  of  Dr.  Wil- 
son, the  eminent  Scottish  missionary  in  Bombay,  and  Dr. 
Graham  of  Ireland,  to  Syria  to  make  preparations  for  a  joint 
mission  of  those  Churches.  They  recommended  Damascus  as 
the  point  of  departure.  In  1843  this  mission  was  started. 
The  Free  Church  soon  retired,  but  its  place  was  taken  by  the 
United   Presbyterians  of  America  (1845-1877).     They  also 


2o8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

abandoned  the  work,  after  their  Church  began  its  mission  in 
Egypt  in  the  year  1854  ;  so  that  the  work  in  Damascus  is  now 
carried  on  by  the  Irish  Presbyterians  alone. 

In  the  first  years  of  this  mission  several  striking  conver- 
sions took  place,  which  aroused  great  excitement.  Thus  in 
1848  Meshaka,  a  Koman  Catholic  doctor,  joined  them,  fol- 
lowed in  1852  by  the  Dominican  missionary,  Ferrette.  In 
1860  Damascus  suffered  severely  from  the  disturbances  in  the 
Lebanon.  In  the  massacre  of  July  9th-15th,  the  Irish  pioneer, 
Dr.  Graham,  was  murdered.  After  this  visitation  a  new  era 
seemed  to  have  begun  for  the  mission,  for,  in  1871,  the  British 
consul  reported  to  his  government  that  thousands  of  Moslems 
were  on  the  point  of  embracing  Christianity.  This  expecta- 
tion was,  however,  not  realized.  In  1875  a  new  door  seemed 
to  be  opening,  for  the  Greeks,  disgusted  with  their  avaricious 
archbishop,  turned  en  masse  to  the  Protestant  Church.  But 
here  also  there  was  disappointment  in  store  for  the  mission. 
Since  then  it  has  gone  forward  on  its  quiet  way.  Eound  the 
main  station  in  Damascus  there  is  a  circle  of  eleven  out-sta- 
tions. The  result  of  fifty  years'  patient  work  is  to  be  found 
in  the  two  hundred  communicant  members,  and  five  or  six 
hundred  adherents,  and  in  the  thousand  pupils  gathered  in 
nineteen  primary  schools.  In  1866  the  Edinburgh  Medical 
Mission  Association  commenced  its  work  in  connection  with 
the  Yictoria  Hospital,  a  work  peculiarly  appropriate  in  a 
place  where  Moslem  fanaticism  pertinaciously  opposes  Chris- 
tianity. 

During  the  past  four  years,  the  Irish  Society  has  transferred 
several  of  its  out-stations  to  the  Danish  Orient  Mission,  which 
has  lately  entered  the  country  under  the  leadership  of  ?astor 
Trip  and  Dr.  Fox  Maule,  who  have  settled  down  among  the 
Beduins  on  the  outskirts  of  the  desert,  in  Derratije,  Nebk  and 
Kirjatein,  where  they  have  begun  to  labour  with  great  zeal. 

(c)  In  Northern  Syria  are  to  be  found  missions  of  an 
American  Church,  and  of  several  small  English  societies. 
The  American  Reformed  Presbyterians,  the  so-called  Cove- 
nanters,  being  but  a  small   Church  of  barely  10,000  com- 


Syria  and  Palestine  209 

municants,  are  not  able  to  support  a  strong  mission,  es- 
pecially since  their  Church  has  recently  begun  work  in  China. 
They  adhere  strictly  to  their  Calvinistic  traditions,  singing  no 
hymns  but  only  a  rhythmical  version  of  the  Psalms.  Hero 
Rev.  S.  Lyde,  an  English  independent  missionary  (died  1860), 
settled  in  1854,  interesting  himself  much  in  the  Nusairiyeh, 
among  whom  he  began  an  evangelistic  work,  starting  from 
Bahamrat. 

In  1886  his  lungs  became  seriously  affected,  and  he  was 
therefore  glad  to  hand  over  the  work  to  his  American  succes- 
sors. Soon  several  of  the  Nusairiyeh  were  baptized,  and  em- 
ployed as  teachers.  It  was  hoped  that,  by  means  of  schools 
for  boys  and  girls,  this  shy  and  retiring  mountain  folk  could 
be  won  over.  But  the  Turkish  authorities  were  watching  the 
attempt  with  hostile  eyes.  The  forty  mission  schools  were 
closed,  the  converts  from  among  the  Nusairiyeh  were  drafted 
into  the  Turkish  army,  being  thus  removed  from  the  influence 
of  the  mission,  and  the  entire  people  were  pronounced  to  be 
Muhammadans,  being  thus  debarred  from  becoming  Chris- 
tians. These  Turkish  intrigues  put  a  stop  to  the  work  among 
the  Nusairiyeh. 

Attention  was  now  turned  to  the  Oriental  Churches,  and, 
with  them  in  view,  the  work  was  extended  to  Cilicia  and  the 
island  of  Cyprus.  In  Cilicia  stations  were  begun  in  1880  in 
Mersina,  Tarsus  and  Adana.  These  stations  were,  however, 
only  feebly  occupied,  there  being  at  present  only  two  mis- 
sionaries and  one  lady  nurse,  the  church-members  numbering 
seventy-four.  There  is  room  for  the  Reformed  Church  along- 
side the  larger  work  of  the  Board  in  this  thickly  populated 
province.  Cyprus,  which,  since  1878,  has  been  under  the 
British  Crown,  is  predominatingly  Greek  Orthodox.^ 

The  Reformed  Church  Mission,  after  first  stationing  an  able 
assistant  there,  entered  upon  more  extensive  work  on  the 
island,  where,  however,  they  employ  but  two  missionaries, 

'Of  the  population  of  209,286  in  1891,  158,585  belonged  to  the  Greek  Ortho- 
dox Church,  47,926  were  Muhammadans,  1,131  Maronites,  915  Roman  Catholics, 
280  Armenians,  and  271  Protestants,  among  whom  many  were  English, 


210     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

brothers,  one  of  whom  is  a  doctor.  Under  English  rule  Mu- 
hammadans  proved  to  be  less  unapproachable,  and  some  of 
them  joined  the  mission.  But  the  Greeks  kept  sternly  aloof, 
and  even  offered  violent  opposition.  Chapels  were  maliciously 
set  on  fire,  and  the  lives  of  converts  were  threatened  by  ex- 
cited crowds.  The  British  authorities  also  intimated  to  the 
missionaries  that  they  did  not  approve  of  their  proselytizing 
among  the  Greek  Christians,  and  that  sufficient  provision  was 
being  made  for  the  sick  by  the  government.  Cyprus  is,  there- 
fore, not  an  inviting  place  as  a  mission  field.  There  are  only 
twenty-five  or  thirty  communicants  belonging  to  the  mission. 
The  stations  are  the  harbour  town  of  Larnaka,  and  Leukosia 
(Nicosia),  the  capital  of  the  island. 

Several  undertakings  on  a  smaller  scale  must  now  be  men- 
tioned, some  of  which  were  soon  abandoned.  Skene,  the 
British  consul,  tried  in  1860  to  settle  Beduins  of  the  Syrian 
desert  as  agriculturists,  and  to  persuade  their  children  to  at- 
tend Christian  schools.^ 

In  Antioch,  the  ancient  capital  of  Syria,  which  gives  to-day 
no  evidence  of  its  former  greatness,  two  small  Churches,  the 
Scottish  and  Irish  Reformed  Presbyterian  Churches,  founded 
a  small  mission,  which  was  conducted  by  a  medical  mission- 
ary. After  the  latter  had  long  managed  with  an  inadequate 
rented  cottage,   a   roomy   mission  house  was   built,  costing 

f^'  Skene's  project  was  an  interesting  one.  As  British  Consul  in  Aleppo,  he 
had  seen  how  the  Beduin  robber  tribes,  such  as  the  Anesi  and  Heduan,  were 
continually  pushing  back  the  peaceful  farmers  of  Syria,  in  order  to  obtain  more 
and  better  pasturage  for  their  ever-increasing  herds  of  camels  and  sheep.  As  he 
had,  since  the  Crimean  War,  kept  up  an  acquaintance  with  influential  Beduin 
sheikhs,  he  thought  he  would  be  able,  in  spite  of  the  Beduins'  deep-rooted  dis- 
trust of  the  Turkish  authorities,  to  induce  several  tribes  to  establish  a  kind  of 
buffer  against  the  desert  hordes  of  nomads  and  bandits.  Under  the  presump- 
tion that  the  hatti  humayoun  allowed  religious  liberty  in  Turkey  (cf.  Chap. 
Ill,  6),  a  Muhamraadan  missionary  society  was  formed  in  London  on  the  motion 
of  Dr,  Muehleisen  Arnold  in  1861.  This  society  entered  into  communication 
with  Skene,  with  a  view  to  finding  centres  for  their  missionary  work  in  these 
agricultural  settlements.  But  Skene's  project  was  frustrated  by  Turkish  in- 
difference, and  Arnold'  s  Muhammadan  Mission  had  no  vitality  in  it  {Ev, 
Missionsmagazin,  1861,  pp.  319  ff.). 


Syria  and  Palestine  211 

£2,100,  and  the  mission  was  extended  by  additional  out-sta- 
tions at  Idlib  (18S4r)  and  Sueidiye  (1889).  Although  every 
effort  is  made  to  reach  the  entire  population,  yet  the  main 
part  of  the  work  has  been  carried  on  among  the  Orthodox 
Greeks.  About  forty  converts  form  the  only  congregation. 
In  Sueidiye,  the  Seleucia  of  former  times,  an  Englishman,  Dr. 
Holt  Yates,  began  independent  missionary  work  in  1846. 
Dying  in  1874,  he  bequeathed  the  whole  of  his  mission  prop- 
erty to  the  American  Reformed  Mission,  which,  since  then, 
has  maintained  Sueidiye  as  an  out-station  of  Latakia. 

The  large  town  of  Haleb  (Aleppo),  the  present  capital  of 
Northern  Syria,  which  long  ago  outstripped  Antioch,  being 
the  central  point  of  various  great  caravan  routes,  and  the 
main  station  (at  present  also  the  terminus)  of  the  Syrian  rail- 
way between  Beirut  and  the  North,  has  been  occupied  by 
various  societies,  one  after  another,  first  in  1855  by  the 
American  Board,  which  had  here  the  southernmost  station  of 
its  Central  Turkey  Mission  ;  later  (1857-1866)  by  the  United 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland,  which,  with  Aleppo  as  its 
starting-point,  carried  on  missionary  work  among  the  Jews  ; 
and,  since  1895,  by  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  England, 
which  also  prefers  to  labour  among  the  Jews. 

The  waste  of  energy  that  results  from  the  dividing  of  the 
missionary  undertaking  in  Syria  among  so  many  small,  inde- 
pendent missions  is  to  be  regretted.  Though  considerable 
sums  have  been  spent,  but  little  abiding  effect  has  been  pro- 
duced in  this  religiously  and  politically  distracted  country. 
Yet,  by  means  of  their  numerous  schools  scattered  over  the 
country,  in  which  according  to  English  custom  the  English 
language  takes  the  foremost  place,  they  have  had  a  share  in 
winning  a  recognition  of  the  importance  of  the  English  lan- 
guage and  of  Protestant  culture,  in  conjunction  with  other 
English  influences,  that  have  entered  the  country.  And  this 
result  is  of  importance  for  the  Protestant  missionary  under- 
taking, particularly  since  the  French  language  and  Jesuitical 
influence  had  been  greatly  fostered  by  the  powerful  Roman 
Mission  and  the  Jesuit  schools.     Against  these  latter  an  ener- 


2 1 2     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

getio  pushing  of  English  and  Protestant  influences  is  a  neces- 
sary and  valuable  step  in  the  direction  of  the  preaching  of  the 
Gospel.  It  may  be  asserted  that  in  the  course  of  the  twenty- 
five  years  succeeding  1860,  every  considerable  village  in  the 
whole  of  Syria,  from  Haraath  and  Latakia  in  the  North  right 
into  Galilee,  has  been  occupied  by  Protestant  missions. 
Herein  is  to  be  found  an  explanation  of  the  fact  that  the  pre- 
dominant mission  of  the  American  Presbyterians  has  never 
thought  it  necessary  to  vie  with  other  societies  in  the  forma- 
tion of  stations.  Its  work  has  been  intensive  rather  than  ex- 
tensive. 

By  introducing  an  account  of  these  minor  missionary  efforts 
at  this  point,  we  have  been  anticipating  the  course  of  the  his- 
tory of  missions  in  Syria,  so  that  we  must  now  retrace  our 
steps  to  the  year  1870. 


3.     The  Mission  of  the  American  Presbyterians,  1870-1908 

When  the  American  Board  was  founded  in  1810,  it  gath- 
ered around  itself  friends  of  missions  in  the  Congregational 
Church,  but,  like  the  London  Mission  in  its  early  days,  in- 
vited other  denominations,  especially  the  Presbyterians,  to 
take  a  share  in  the  work.  In  the  course  of  the  century  de- 
nominational consciousness  among  the  Presbyterians  grew 
stronger,  and  in  1837  the  Presbyterians  of  the  "  Old  School " 
separated  themselves  from  the  Board.  When,  in  1870,  the 
"  New  School  "  combined  with  the  "  Old  School,"  so  forming 
the  great  Northern  Presbyterian  Church  of  the  United  States, 
the  Board  decided  to  transfer  its  mission  in  Syria,  as  well  as 
that  in  Persia  (see  Chap.  V,  2)  to  this  Church,  seeing  that 
its  income  in  America  would  be  seriously  reduced  by  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Presbyterians.  At  first,  however,  this  ar- 
rangement affected  the  mission  in  Syria  but  little,  since  the 
old  missionaries  remained  at  their  posts  under  the  new  man- 
agement. Yet  the  year  1870  must  be  regarded  as  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  Syrian  missions.  If  the 
entire  work  had  been  till  then  more  or  less  in  process  of  de- 


Syria  and  Palestine  213 

velopment,  branch  after  branch  of  it  now  began  to  be  consoli- 
dated. This  is  true,  first  of  all,  of  the  mission  stations.^  With 
the  exception  of  the  headquarters  at  Beirut,  the  stations  had 
been  often  changed.  This  had  been  an  advantage  in  the  first 
decades  of  the  work.  Now,  however,  the  work  was  consoli- 
dated around  five  stations,  chiefly  because  of  the  establish- 
ment of  advanced  schools  in  these  stations.  Tripoli  in  the 
North  and  Sidon  in  the  South  were  chosen  as  centres  of  ac- 
tivity. It  was  not  so  easy  to  select  central  stations  in  the  ex- 
tensive mountain  region  of  the  Lebanon,  with  the  numerous 
villages  on  its  western  slopes,  and  in  the  fruitful  valley  of 
Coele-Syria.  There  were  here  for  a  time  two  stations,  one  in 
Abeih  (1873)  and  the  other  in  Zahleh  (1872).  With  a  view  to 
better  ecclesiastical  concentration,  they  were  combined  in  the 
"  Lebanon  station,"  with  its  centre  in  Zahleh.  To  the  present 
day  there  are  various  American  and  Scottish  married  mis- 
sionaries living  within  this  "  Lebanon  station,"  especially  in 
Abeih  and  Shuweir.  Suk  el  Gharb  with  its  flourishing  high- 
school  is  an  important  out-station. 

As  Syria  is  a  healthful  country,  the  mission  has  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  great  continuity  in  its  staff.  There  are  to-day, 
still  living  among  the  missionaries  there,  and  working  with 
their  remaining  strength,  the  widows  of  Dr.  Yan  Dyck,  the 
Bible  translator,  and  of  the  missionary  Wm.  Bird;  the 
former  having  been  sixty-five  years  in  the  service  of  the  mis- 
sion, and  the  latter  fifty-five  years.  The  two  Nestors  of  the 
mission  are  Dr.  H.  H.  Jessup  and  Dr.  Daniel  Bliss,  both  of 
whom  celebrated  their  fifty  years'  jubilee  as  missionaries  in 
1906.  Dr.  Bliss,  the  founder  of  the  Syrian  Protestant  Col- 
lege and  its  president  for  many  years,  has  been  succeeded  in 
this  work  by  his  son,  Dr.  Howard  Bliss.  Dr.  Jessup  is  still 
in  active  service,  as  is  also  Dr.  Samuel  Jessup.     A  circum- 

'  Afe  the  time  of  the  transfer,  the  Syrian  Mission  had  fonr  main  stations,  served 
by  nine  missionaries  and  nine  lady  missionaries,  one  Syrian  pastor,  eleven  cate- 
chista  and  thirty-four  teachers.  There  were  eight  churches  vpith  245  communi- 
cants, thirty-one  schools  with  1,184  pupils,  one  theological  seminary  in  Abeih, 
one  seminary  for  girls  in  Beirut,  and  a  large  printing  establishment. 


214     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

stance,  wliicli  has  also  contributed  to  the  continuity  of  the 
work,  is  that  service  in  the  mission  seems  almost  to  have  be- 
come hereditary  in  certain  families.  Especially  do  the  Jessups 
distinguish  themselves  in  this  respect.  The  Assembly 
Herald  (1908,  p.  546)  reproduces  the  picture  of  an  interest- 
ing group  of  fifteen  men  still  in  active  service,  representing 
in  all  350  years  of  service. 

A  heavy  cross  laid  upon  the  mission  was  the  intolerance  of 
the  Turkish  authorities,  who  have  striven  to  hamper  the  work 
in  every  possible  way.  The  closing  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  schools  among  the  Druses,  and  of  the  schools  of  the 
Reformed  Presbyterians  among  the  Nusairiyeh,  has  been  al- 
ready referred  to.  About  the  year  1886,  the  ill  treatment 
on  the  part  of  the  Turks  became  nearly  intolerable.  Eleven 
schools,  situated  between  Tripoli  and  Hamath,  were  closed, 
as  well  as  all  the  mission  schools  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Adana  in  Cilicia,  and  to  the  east  of  Banias  on  Mount 
Hermon.  Here  also  seven  Protestant  places  of  worship  were 
oflScially  closed.  In  spite  of  many  negotiations,  the  building 
of  a  new  Protestant  church  was  not  permitted.  It  became 
known  that  a  secret  order  had  come  from  the  Minister  in 
Constantinople,  in  1885,  to  the  effect  that  no  churches,  nor 
other  places  of  worship,  nor  charitable  institutions,  might  be 
either  built  or  repaired,  and  that  such  as  had  been  repaired  or 
built  without  special  permission  should  be  closed  {Intelli- 
gencer, 1886,  p.  Y93). 

The  Protestant  missionaries  were  in  sad  trouble.  All  their 
attempts  to  obtain  relief  in  high  quarters  were  in  vain.  At 
last  they  drew  up  an  open  letter,  addressed  to  the  Christian 
Powers  and  to  public  opinion  in  Europe.  This  was  attended 
with  such  a  measure  of  success  that  the  Turkish  authorities 
relented  somewhat,  though  most  of  the  schools  remained 
closed.  The  time  of  systematic  oppression  came  to  an  end, 
but  only  after  the  development  of  the  educational  work  of 
the  mission  had  received  a  check  from  which  it  was  hard  to 
recover,  a  striking  example  of  the  hostile  official  influences, 
with  which  the  mission  has  ever  had  to  contend. 


Syria  and  Palestine  215 

The  Presbyterian  Mission  has  developed  chiefly  in  four 
directions : 

(1)  Introduction  of  Presbyterian  orga/nization.  The 
missionary  work  of  the  great  American  Presbyterian  Board 
throughout  the  world  bears  the  impress  of  the  Presbyterian 
form  of  church  organization,  according  to  which  members  of 
the  native  churches  are  grouped  in  congregations  and  presby- 
teries, and  are,  as  far  as  possible,  independent  of  the  mission- 
aries, maintaining  and  governing  themselves,  as  well  as 
carrying  on  their  own  evangelistic  work.  This  internal  organ- 
ization resembles  the  loose  connection  of  the  Congregational 
Church  Unions  of  the  American  Board  in  Turkey,  but  the 
essential  diiference  of  organization  between  the  Congrega- 
tional and  Presbyterian  Churches  appears  distinctly  in  the 
stricter  constitution  and  union  of  the  congregations  of  the 
Presbyterian  Mission.  The  Presbyterians  found  thoroughly 
organized  churches,  when,  in  1870,  they  took  over  the  work 
from  the  Congregationalists.  The  first  native  church  had 
been  organized  in  1848.  By  the  year  1870  there  were 
eight  such  churches,  with  245  members,  one  native  pastor  and 
eleven  preachers.  The  Presbyterian  Church  wisely  left  it  to 
time  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  change,  which  should  bring 
the  mission  into  conformity  with  the  Presbyterian  system. 
At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  mission  in  December,  1882,  the 
plan  of  forming  a  synod  and  several  presbyteries  was  unan- 
imously adopted.  In  October,  1883,  the  first  presbytery, 
that  of  Sidon,  was  organized,  in  1890  the  second,  that  of 
Tripoli,  in  1896  a  third,  that  of  the  Mount  Lebanon  district, 
which  includes  Beirut. 

(2)  Literary  worh  is  one  of  the  chief  activities  of  the  mis- 
sion. The  centre  of  this  work  is  the  preparation  of  new 
editions,  and  the  multiplication  of  copies,  of  the  excellent 
translation  of  the  Bible  by  Smith  and  Yan  Dyck.  In  the 
course  of  years,  fifty  editions,  differing  in  form  and  type, 
have  been  issued  and  1,250,000  bound  copies  have  been  dis- 
posed of.  The  great  printing  establishment  in  Beirut  has 
also  supplied  the  mission  with  such  other  publications  as  it 


2i6     History  of  Protectant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

has  required.  Among  these  are  school-books,  books  for 
public  worship  or  private  edification,  and  also  the  Arabic 
Protestant  weekly.  En  Neshra  (The  Herald),  which,  how- 
ever, has  unfortunately  a  circulation  of  only  430  copies,  and 
has  therefore  of  necessity  been  reduced  in  size  of  late  years. 
For  the  use  of  pastors  and  teachers  there  have  also  been  pub- 
lished comprehensive  commentaries  on  the  books  of  the  Bible. 
Thus  there  is  already  appearing  a  four  volume  commentary 
on  the  JN'ew  Testament,  also  one  of  several  volumes  on  the 
Pentateuch,  and  another  on  the  Epistles.  The  output  of  this 
printing  establishment  at  Beirut  is  considerable.  In  1905,  a 
record  year,  47,250,000  pages  of  Bible  editions  were  printed. 
In  this  literary  work  the  Presbyterians  have  been  most  nobly 
assisted  by  the  American  Bible  and  Tract  Societies.  It  is 
only  by  means  of  this  support  that  this  magnificent  work  has 
been  made  possible.  A  striking  proof  of  the  value  of  this 
literary  work  is  the  change  of  policy  of  the  Koman  Church 
in  Syria.  This  Church,  in  the  first  decades,  tried  to  suppress 
the  circulation  of  the  Bible,  any  copies  introduced  into  the 
country  by  Protestants  being  burned.  But  as  this  proved 
without  effect,  and  Protestant  Bibles  were  bought  or  distrib- . 
uted  by  thousands  and  eagerly  read,  they  themselves  produced 
an  Arabic  translation  of  the  Scriptures  in  Beirut  which,  in  the 
main,  agreed  with  the  Protestant  version,  except  that  the 
Apocrypha  were  introduced  and  annotations  containing 
extracts  from  .the  Church  Fathers  were  added  to  the  more  im- 
portant passages,  with  a  view  to  establishing  Roman  exegesis. 
At  first  this  literary  work  was  not  much  interfered  with  by 
the  Turkish  authorities.  But  in  1869  the  "Imperial  Press 
and  School  Laws "  were  promulgated,  establishing  a  very 
severe  censorship  over  all  books  and  newspapers.  More  than 
any  other  publication  the  weekly  magazine,  En  Neshra^  re- 
ceived severe  criticism,  and  was  temporarily  suppressed.  It 
was  neither  permitted  to  publish  any  news  of  current  events, 
nor  to  make  adverse  criticism  upon  the  religious  beliefs  of  any 
of  the  sects  in  the  empire.  So  its  scope  was  very  limited  in- 
deed. 


Syria  and  Palestine  217 

(3)  Medical  missionary  work  was  here,  as  everywhere 
else,  carried  on  by  the  Presbyterian  Mission.  From  the  be- 
ginning able  doctors  were  at  work,  among  whom  was  Dr. 
Yan  Dyck,  the  eminent  translator  of  the  Bible.  But  it  was 
only  later  on  that  regular  medical  mission  stations  were  es- 
tablished, with  the  necessary  staffs.  This  work  has  three 
centres,  the  largest  of  which  is  Beirut,  where  the  St.  John's 
Hospital  has  been  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Syrian  Prot- 
estant College.  This  is  a  good  example  of  the  advantage  of 
cooperation,  the  order  of  St.  John  providing  and  maintaining 
the  hospital,  the  Kaiserswerth  Homes  supplying  the  trained 
nurses,  and  the  Presbyterians  the  doctors.  It  was  a  thought- 
ful action  of  the  German  Emperor,  while  on  his  visit  to  the 
Near  East  in  1898,  to  confer  the  order  of  the  Ped  Eagle  on 
the  leading  physician.  Prof.  Dr.  Post,  and  thus  to  give  ex- 
pression to  the  gratitude  of  the  German  people  to  the  Ameri- 
cans for  their  cooperation  in  this  charitable  work. 

The  Presbyterians  have  in  Tripoli  their  only  medical  sta- 
tion that  is  fully  equipped  with  hospital  and  dispensary. 
There  are  two  dispensaries,  at  Hamath  and  Homs.  Dr.  Mary 
Eddy,  who  v,  as  the  first  lady  in  the  Ottoman  Empire  to  ob- 
tain the  requisite  Turkish  diploma  for  the  practice  of  medi- 
cine, proved  equal  to  the  exertions  of  many  years  of  constant 
itinerant  medical  practice,  during  which  she  travelled  with 
her  case  of  medicines  and  bandages  in  all  directions,  in  the 
service  of  women  particularly.  Latterly  she  has  settled  down 
on  the  coast  near  Beirut,  at  Funieh,  opening  also  a  small 
sanitarium  at  Mount  Kaneesh  for  lung  patients,  who,  strange 
to  say,  are  as  much  avoided  in  Syria  as  lepers  are. 

(4)  The  greatest  service  which  the  Presbyterians  have 
rendered  has  been  the  methodical  development  of  their  edu- 
cational system.  By  means  of  their  schools,  they  have  ex- 
tended their  sphere  of  influence  far  beyond  the  borders  of 
Syria, 

The  Protestant  educational  system  can  be  fully  understood 
only  by  glancing  at  the  development  of  the  Turkish  system. 
About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  during  the  reign  of 


2i8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Sultaa  Abdul  Mejid,  who  was  a  friend  of  reform  (1839-1861), 
the  all-powerful  Grand  Vizier,  Keshid  Pasha,  systematically 
endeavoured  to  raise  Turkey  to  the  level  of  the  civilized 
"Western  lands,  and  to  this  end  he  established,  in  all  the 
large  towns  and  centres  of  trade,  schools,  which  were  to  be 
rashdiye,  i.  e.,  purely  secular  institutions,  in  which  occidental 
education  was  to  be  offered,  especially  a  thorough  grounding 
in  French.  Into  these  schools  the  children,  even  of  Chris- 
tians, poured,  and  it  looked  as  if  a  new  era  had  dawned  for 
education  in  Turkey.  But,  in  1872,  there  was  a  backward 
swing  of  the  pendulum.  Occidental  languages  and  subjects 
were  tabooed.  The  Koran  and  specifically  Muhamraadan 
subjects  were  substituted  for  them.  The  result  of  this  was 
that  nearly  all  the  Christian  children  left  the  schools,  which, 
however,  retained  the  name  Kashdiye  (secular),  and,  on  that 
account,  were  supported  by  taxes,  which  were  with  particular 
pleasure  levied  upon  Christians.  Thus  Turkey  achieved  two 
things  by  this  peculiar  educational  policy.  First,  an  excuse 
was  supplied  for  throwing  part  of  the  burden  of  the  expense 
of  education  on  the  Christian  community,  and,  second,  an 
effectual  means  was  provided  for  harassing  the  mission 
schools.  An  order  came  that  only  teachers  who  had  been 
granted  diplomas  by  the  official  school  boards  should  be  al- 
lowed to  teach  in  "special  schools,"  which  meant  simply  the 
mission  schools.  Yet  very  few  such  school  boards  were  ap- 
pointed, and  such  as  were  appointed  consisted  of  narrow- 
minded  Muhammadans,  who  refused  to  grant  a  diploma  to 
any  one  who  was  a  Christian.  Such  were  the  troubles  that 
drove  almost  to  distraction  the  Protestant  missionaries  of 
Syria  and  Palestine  in  the  seventies  and  eighties  of  the  last 
century  {LitelUngencer,  1886,  pp.  785  ff.). 

In  the  beginning  of  the  sixties  the  necessity  of  establishing 
a  central  educational  institution  in  Beirut  was  forced  upon 
the  attention  of  the  Americans.  Dr.  Bliss,  that  able  scholar 
and  experienced  missionary,  was  the  chief  advocate  of  this 
great  undertaking,  and  to  it  he  devoted  his  life.  This  institu- 
tion was  rendered  independent  of  the  mission  in  that  a  special 


Syria  and  Palestine  219 

fund  was  collected  for  it,  and  a  special  board  of  trustees  set 
over  it.  But  as  the  members  of  this  board  are  keenly  inter- 
ested in  the  general  missionary  undertaking,  and  as  the  gen- 
eral board  of  management  in  Beirut  consists  almost  exclu- 
sively of  missionaries,  a  close  personal  connection  with  the 
mission  is  maintained.  The  common  interests  also  of  the 
college  and  the  mission  demand  continued  cooperation.  The 
college  was  opened  in  Beirut  in  the  autumn  of  1866,  a  pre- 
paratory class  having  been  formed  the  previous  year.  Since 
then  one  chair  after  another  has  been  instituted.  At  the 
present  time  there  are  fifteen  large  buildings  and  several 
smaller  ones,  occupying  a  lofty  site  on  Ras  Beirut,  and  pre- 
senting a  very  stately  appearance.  The  corps  of  instruction 
and  administration  numbers  seventy-one.  Thirty-three  of 
these  are  from  America,  and  ten  from  Europe,  while  twenty- 
six  are  Syrians.  It  is,  therefore,  of  all  the  Protestant  schools 
in  the  Near  East,  the  best  equipped  with  a  foreign  staff.  At 
present  there  are  827  students,  of  whom  346  are  Greeks,  147 
Protestants,  127  Muhararaadans,  sixty-two  Jews,  and  twenty 
Druses.  Thus  all  the  many  races  of  Syria  are  represented  in 
it.  There  are  seven  departments ;  a  preparatory  department 
and  a  college  impart  general  education,  especially  the  indis- 
pensable knowledge  of  the  English  language,  for,  unfortu- 
nately, it  has  seemed  necessary  to  make  English  the  language 
of  instruction,  instead  of  Arabic,  the  national  tongue.  It  is 
not  required  that  all  the  students  go  through  the  entire  course 
of  nine  years.  If  they  come  with  sufficient  general  education 
and  knowledge  of  English,  they  may  dispense  with  a  part  of 
the  preparatory  course.  Nor  is  it  indispensable  that  students 
finish  the  college  course  before  taking  up  special  studies.  Con- 
nected with  the  college  are  four  special  departments — a  school 
of  commerce,  a  medical  department,  a  school  of  pharmacy, 
and  a  school  of  Biblical  archaeology  and  philology.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that,  in  consequence  of  their  unfavourable 
position  under  Turkish  rule,  Syrian  Christians  were  excluded 
from  many  of  the  higher  professions,  commerce  and  medicine 
alone  being  really  open  to  them.     The  medical  department  is 


220     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

a  brilliant  feature  of  the  institution,  having,  by  its  excellent 
work,  gained  the  approbation,  even  of  the  Turkish  govern- 
ment, to  such  an  extent  that  the  Government  Board  of  Ex- 
aminers comes  from  Constantinople  to  Beirut  to  superintend 
the  examinations.  At  these  examinations,  by  the  way,  the 
procedure  is  genuinely  Turkish,  for,  since  the  students  have 
been  taught  in  English,  their  answers  are  well-nigh  unintel- 
ligible to  the  Turkish  examiners.  Hence  the  interpreters 
have  almost  always  a  busy  time.  It  is  also  certainly  an  ad- 
vantage to  the  institution  and  to  archaeological  study  in  gen- 
eral, that  latterly  a  department  for  training  expert  assistants 
in  the  work  of  excavation  has  been  added  to  the  college.  Nor 
are  the  women  forgotten,  for,  attached  to  the  medical  school, 
there  is  a  training-school  for  nurses.  To  provide  these  nurses 
with  practice  in  their  profession,  an  infirmary  with  forty  beds, 
and  a  large  children's  hospital,  have  been  added.  The  entire 
college  is  of  a  thoroughly  evangelical  character,  attendance 
at  the  Bible  classes  and  Sunday  services  being  obligatory. 
The  mixed  composition  of  the  students  naturally  leads  to  the 
result  that  in  the  religious  instruction  more  weight  is  laid  on 
the  commonly  accepted  religious  and  ethical  truths  of  Chris- 
tianity than  on  specifically  Protestant  doctrinal  views.  The 
Syrian  Protestant  College  is  the  highest  school  open  to  Chris- 
tians in  the  Near  East,  and  the  solidity  of  its  work  is  not  sur- 
passed by  any  of  the  public  state  schools  of  Turkey.  The 
schools  of  all  the  other  Protestant  missions  in  these  parts,  as 
well  as  in  Egypt,  look  up  to  the  Beirut  College  as  to  a  univer- 
sity, and  send  their  promising  students  to  finish  their  educa- 
tion there. 

In  an  article  entitled  "  America  in  the  East,"  which  Pro- 
fessor Ludwig  Bernhard  published  in  the  "  Kussian  Year 
Book,"  in  1905,  he  pictures  the  college  as  a  grand  and  well- 
executed  attempt  to  prepare  the  way  for  American  interests, 
and  particularly  for  American  trade  in  the  Near  East.  Such 
a  conception  of  the  institution  is  one-sided  and  misleading ; 
the  college  is  a  missionary  institution.  Yet  Bernhard's  picture 
of  the  influeinces  which  go  out  from  the  college  is,  in  the 


Syria  and  Palestine  221 

main,  correct,  and  he  paints  it  in  more  glowing  colours  than  a 
missionary  author  would  dare  to  employ.  "  It  is  a  pleasure  to 
watch  the  stream  of  men  that  go  out  from  the  college  to  the 
conquest  of  the  Near  East.  In  a  most  real  sense  the  medical 
men  prepare  the  way.  For  it  is  through  her  physicians  that 
America  has  disarmed  her  two  mightiest  enemies  .  .  . 
even  the  Turkish  government,  which  makes  no  attempt  to 
conceal  the  hatred  she  cherishes  towards  the  American  mis- 
sionaries. This  very  government  recently  gave  official  recog- 
nition to  the  medical  faculty  of  the  Americans.  .  .  .  It  is 
for  the  Americans  a  mighty  advantage  that  they  have  at 
their  disposal  a  host  of  native  teachers.  These  men,  who 
have  studied  in  the  colleges  at  Constantinople  and  Beirut,  are 
a  by  no  means  inferior  body  of  teachers,  else  they  would  not 
be  in  such  great  demand  in  schools  of  the  most  varied  sorts. 
The  numerous  mission  schools  of  the  Americans,  scattered 
over  the  Near  East,  receive  teachers  from  Beirut.  .  .  • 
Even  Turkish  and  other  native  schools  are  coming  gradually 
under  American  influence,  in  that  they  seek  teachers  from 
Beirut,  and  even,  in  a  measure,  reform  their  method  of  in- 
struction according  to  the  American  pattern.  The  great 
Druse  school  in  the  Lebanon,  which  only  a  few  years  ago 
stood  under  French  influence,  has  put  on  an  American  dress. 
Thus  the  college  is  the  source  of  streams  which  drive  many 
mills.  Everywhere  in  Turkey  one  sees  their  operation,  and 
this  inflaence  will  multiply  itself  many  times." 

"While  the  college  is  independent  of  the  general  mission 
board,  the  latter  itself  conducts  a  comprehensive  educational 
work,  which,  in  its  boys'  department,  is  connected  with  the 
college,  forming  a  kind  of  preparatory  department.  At  the 
bottom  of  this  system  are  the  numerous  village  schools,  large 
and  small,  the  number  of  which  is  at  present  100,  with  5,089 
pupils,  1,800  of  whom  are  girls.  Barely  a  fourth  part  of  the 
children  come  from  Protestant  families.  These  village 
schools  form  one  of  the  most  important  agencies  for  carrying 
Gospel  knowledge  to  the  remotest  villages.  Above  them 
come  several  boarding-schools,  some  being  for  boys  and  some 


222     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

for  girls.  The  oldest  of  these  boarding-schools  for  boys  has 
already  been  mentioned,  the  "  Seminary "  at  Abeih,  which 
was  continued,  with  many  interruptions,  until  1877.  Its 
most  successful  head  was  the  Rev.  Dr.  S.  H.  Calhoun  (in 
Syria  from  1843  to  1876).  In  1882  it  gave  way  to  a  new 
boys'  boarding-school  in  Suk  el  Gharb,  which  enjoys  a  more 
elevated  situation.  This  new  institution  has  had  a  splendid 
development,  having  167  boarders.  Of  perhaps  greater  im- 
portance is  the  "  Gerard  Academy  "  in  Sidon.  Here  many 
of  the  mission  teachers  have  received  their  training.  In  1895 
the  scope  of  this  institution  was  extended  by  the  addition  of 
an  industrial  department,  and  provision  was  also  made  for 
the  care  and  instruction  of  orphan  boys  of  Protestant  parent- 
age. Useful  trades  are  taught  as  a  means  of  present  and 
future  support.  A  farm  of  one  hundred  acres,  not  far  from 
the  city,  called  Dar  G^  Salam,  has  been  acquired  for  the  use 
of  the  orphan  department.  Mrs.  George  Wood,  the  widow 
of  one  of  the  missionaries,  has  liberally  endowed  this  flourish- 
ing industrial  school.  It  has  at  present  227  boarders.  Three 
boarding-schools  have  also  been  established  for  girls,  the 
oldest  of  which,  the  Beirut  Seminary  (1861),  is  perhaps  the 
principal  girls'  school,  having  129  pupils,  who  pay  70,000 
piastres  a  year  in  fees.  The  Tripoli  Girls'  School,  established 
in  1873,  has  had  for  many  years  an  able  principal  in  Miss 
Harriet  La  Grange.  The  Sidon  Seminary  for  Girls  is  of  a 
somewhat  different  stamp,  having  been  established  in  1863 
with  a  view  to  training  teachers  and  Bible- women  in  mission 
work.  It  has  generally  received  as  boarders  only  Protestant 
girls. 

There  is  throughout  Syria  very  keen  competition  in  educa- 
tional work,  due  chiefly  to  the  energetic  educational  policy 
which  the  Protestants  have  maintained  in  the  face  of  all  op- 
position and  all  suppression  of  their  schools.  According  to 
the  educational  statistics  of  Beirut,  in  1899,  this  town  alone 
had  sixty-seven  schools  for  boys,  and  thirty-six  for  girls,  with 
170  male  and  female  teachers,  and  8,705  boys  and  6,768  girls 
under  tuition.     Of   all  these   schools,  twelve  for  boys  and 


Syria  and  Palestine  223 

twenty  for  girls  belonged  to  the  different  Protestant  missions 
located  in  the  town.  The  remaining  seventy-one  schools  are 
divided  among  the  Muhammadans,  Greek  Orthodox,  Maro- 
nites,  Latins,  Melchites,  Jesuits,  Jews,  Jacobites  and  Armenians. 
This  is  surely  an  embarrassment  of  riches  for  a  town  of  barely 
120,000  inhabitants.  In  spite  of  such  keen  competition,  the 
American  Presbyterian  Mission  maintains  the  leading  posi- 
tion. 

In  order  the  better  to  realize  the  present  state  of  Protes- 
tant missions  in  Syria,  we  must  mark  the  many  signs  of  a  new 
era,  that  are  to  be  observed  at  every  turn.  The  country  is 
being  rapidly  opened  up  by  railways.  In  addition  to  the 
Beirut-Damascus  line,  which  has  been  in  existence  for  a  con- 
siderable time,'  there  are  to-day  a  line  connecting  Aleppo 
with  the  Beirut-Damascus  line,  a  line  from  Damascus  to 
Medina,  which  was  opened  amid  remarkable  demonstrations 
and  public  rejoicings  on  the  1st  of  September,  1908,  and 
which  forms  the  greater  part  of  the  proposed  Hejaz  Kail- 
way,  and  a  line  connecting  this  Hejaz  Eailway  with  Haifa. 
Electric  trams  run  in  the  streets  of  Damascus,  and  iron  pipes 
convey  icy  water  from  a  reservoir  three  miles  from  the  city. 
In  Beirut,  also,  they  have  electric  tramways  and  electric 
lighting.  The  Turkish  government  has  established  a  medical 
school  with  a  hospital  in  Damascus,  and  is  building  a  second 
hospital  in  Beirut,  as  well  as  a  large  commercial  and  technical 
school.  The  educational  institutions  of  the  Turkish  Board 
of  Education  are  open  to  Muhammadans  only;  to  provide 
teaching  for  "Christian  dogs"  would  be  a  height  of  liberality 
to  which  the  Porte  could  hardly  attain.  Yet  Christians  of 
all  denominations  have  come  to  see  the  importance  of  educa- 
tion, and  schools  are  an  object  of  vital  interest.'     To  learn 

^An  interesting  example  of  this  change  is  seen  in  the  district  of  Kesrwan,  to 
the  northeast  of  Beirut.  The  inhabitants  of  this  former  stronghold  of  fanat- 
ical Maronites,  hitherto  inaccessible  to  Protestants,  have  wakened  up,  and, 
thoroughly  tired  of  priestly  tyranny,  are  now  begging  the  American  Mission  in 
Beirut,  with  an  importunity  hitherto  hardly  experienced  in  Syria,  to  establish 
schools  amongst  them,  and  to  spread  the  knowledge  of  Bible  truth  {Chriatian 
Missions,  1908,  p.  47). 


224     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  languages  of  the  Occident  is  the  ardent  desire  of  the 
rising  generation,  and  though  but  very  few  get  beyond  a  kind 
of  parrot  proficiency  in  foreign  tongues,  yet,  by  means  of 
these  languages,  and  of  the  schools,  a  stream  of  Western  cul- 
ture is  flooding  a  land  made  arid  by  Islam  and  Turkish  mis- 
management. Political  autonomy  under  a  Christian  Pasha 
does  not  appear  to  have  fulfilled  all  that  was  expected  of  it. 
No  doubt  the  first  Christian  Pashas,  David,  Franco,  Rostein, 
Wassa  and  Kaum,  were  able  men,  and  Syria  was  for  forty 
years  the  envy  of  the  adjacent  provinces.  But  the  Pasha 
who  died  in  1908  was  a  weak  man,  so  that  a  scandalous  state 
of  things  marked  his  term  of  office,  nor  is  his  successor  able 
to  cope  with  the  existing  abuses.  The  constitution,  granted 
to  the  province,  appears  to  be  insufficient,  and  nnsuited  to 
the  increase  of  the  population  and  other  altered  conditions. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  entrance  of  occidental  culture  into 
Syria,  there  is,  unfortunately,  increasing  emigration  taking 
place  to  Europe  and,  particularly,  to  the  United  States.  As 
it  is  chiefly  the  Christians  who  have  hitherto  emigrated,  the 
ratio  of  the  Christian  population  to  the  Muhammadan  in 
Syria  is  diminishing.  Emigration  from  the  Protestant  con- 
gregations is  disproportionately  great,  both  because  the  mis- 
sionaries are  in  intimate  touch  with  foreign  countries,  and 
also  because  the  thorough  Protestant  education  which  they 
have  received  makes  the  Protestant  Christians  peculiarly  able 
to  improve  their  circumstances  abroad.  The  Protestant  com- 
munity in  Beirut  numbers,  for  instance,  235  communicants. 
Of  these  112  live  abroad.  Nearly  half  of  the  members  of  the 
congregations  belonging  to  the  station  at  Tripoli  have  emi- 
grated. It  is  now  customary  for  the  agents  of  the  great 
steamship  companies  to  visit  the  Christian  villages  of  Syria, 
holding  out  prospects  of  gold  mines  in  North  or  South 
America  to  the  simple  villagers.  To  some  extent  these  emi- 
grants attach  themselves  to  churches  in  the  countries  to 
which  they  go.  Many  also  return  home,  when  they  have 
done  well  abroad.  But,  alas,  still  more  are  ruined,  body  and 
soul,  in  their  eager  pursuit  of  wealth.     As  it  is  mostly  the 


Syria  and  Palestine  225 

strong,  young  people,  the  most  fit  to  earn  a  livelihood,  who 
emigrate,  the  efforts  of  the  mission  to  place  the  congregations 
on  an  independent  footing  are  greatly  hindered.  But  this  in- 
creasing emigration  has  at  least  a  beneficial  effect  on  the  edu- 
cational work  of  the  mission,  for,  in  order  to  succeed  in 
America,  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
English,  and  consequently  every  school  in  which  English  is 
taught  is  well  attended,  fees,  when  required,  being  willingly 
paid.  Nearly  all  of  the  Anglo-American  schools  are  crowded, 
and  the  Syrian  Protestant  College  in  Beirut  is  compelled 
every  year  to  add  new  buildings  to  meet  the  rush  of  students. 
In  fact  it  is  a  golden  opportunity  for  the  mission  in  its  educa- 
tional work. 

Kelations  with  the  rival  Churches  have  hardly  improved. 
The  Maronites  have  learned  to  pride  themselves  on  the  help 
of  the  Roman  Church.  The  Jesuits  are  busy  everywhere  op- 
posing the  Protestants  and  their  missions.  The  fierce  con- 
test between  Church  and  State  in  France,  which  has  led  to 
the  dissolution  of  the  bond  that  had  existed  between  them 
there  for  centuries,  has  exercised  a  powerful  influence  on 
Roman  missions  in  Syria.  For,  although  these  missions  have 
now  lost  the  political  protection  hitherto  extended  to  them  by 
France,  as  well  as  a  large  share  of  their  financial  support,  by 
reason  of  the  confiscation  of  so  much  of  the  property  belonging 
to  Church  and  Monastery  in  France,  yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  expulsion  from  France  of  various  religious  orders,  to  which 
monks  and  nuns  belonged,  has  brought  a  host  of  workers  to 
Syria,  many  of  whom  devote  themselves  to  missionary  under- 
takings. Hundreds  of  them  are  opening  schools  in  all  parts 
of  Syria  and  Palestine,  partly  to  keep  their  coreligionists 
from  Protestant  enlightenment,  and  partly  with  the  hope  of 
gradually  absorbing  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church. 

The  Orthodox  Greek  Church,  or  at  least  the  few  educated 
men  in  it,  backed  by  Russian  influence  and  money,  is  trying 
to  hold  its  own  against  both  Protestants  and  Romanists. 
The  Bishop  of  Beirut  is  erecting  an  institution  of  vast  propor- 
tions to  counteract  the  educational  crusade  of  the  Jesuits  and 


226     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  powerful  influence  of  the  Protestant  schools.  Some  years 
ago  conditions  were  already  such  that  a  traveller  called  the 
Greek  Church  a  "  Russian  colony."  Particularly  the  district 
of  Tripoli  and  the  slopes  of  Mount  Lebanon  have  recently 
been  flooded  with  Russian  free  schools.  As  a  consequence 
the  people  are  constantly  comparing  the  Protestant  and  Rus- 
sian schools  in  the  matter  of  methodical  discipline,  and,  above 
all,  with  regard  to  school  fees.  Pressure  of  all  kinds  is  some- 
times put  upon  parents  to  take  their  children  from  the  Prot- 
estants and  to  send  them  to  the  Russian  schools.  One  surpri- 
sing result  of  this  multiplication  of  Russian  schools  is  the  great 
demand  for  Bibles  and  school-books  at  the  Protestant  press  in 
Beirut.  The  Russians  bought  in  1900  no  fewer  than  4,026 
Bibles  and  7,893  school-books,  and  in  1901  there  were  twice 
as  many  books  bought  by  the  Russians  as  by  all  of  the  Prot- 
estant mission  schools  put  together. 

Both  the  Roman  and  the  Greek  Churches  have  had  polit- 
ical influence  behind  them.  At  the  time  of  the  commence- 
ment of  Protestant  missions,  Italy  alone  had  political  inter- 
ests in  Syria,  and  Italian  was  considered  as  the  language  of 
the  educated.  Whatever  schools  existed  at  that  time  were 
kept  by  Italian  monks,  and  in  these  schools  Italian  was  taught. 
All  this  underwent  a  change.  France  became  very  interested 
in  establishing  and  furthering  her  influence  in  the  Near  East, 
and  found  it  the  most  convenient  and  safest  means  to  this  end 
to  take  the  Roman  missions  and  the  Roman  churches  under 
her  wing.  Starting  with  the  theory  that  culture  is  deter- 
mined by  language,  France  granted  large  sums  to  subsidize 
all  schools  in  which  French  was  taught.  As  a  result  of  this 
policy  French  is  so  widely  understood  that,  with  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  that  language,  one  can  travel  throughout  the 
Near  East  from  Alexandria  to  Constantinople.  How  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State  in  France  will  affect  the  policy 
of  that  country  in  the  Near  East  is  not  yet  clear.  Hitherto 
she  has  been  the  patron  of  the  Roman  Churches,  as  Russia 
has  been  of  the  Orthodox  Greek  Churches.  Both  countries 
have   found  in  their  respective  Churches  a  convenient  tool 


Syria  and  Palestine  227 

wherewith  to  force  an  entrance  into  the  tottering  Turkish 
Empire. 

Nothing  could  be  more  detrimental  to  the  spiritual  devel- 
opment of  the  Syrian  churches  than  their  being  thus  wooed 
from  all  sides,  and  flooded  with  money  and  schools.  It  is  to 
be  regretted  that  a  people,  already  inclined  to  pride  and  to  an 
overestimate  of  its  own  virtues,  should  be  encouraged  in  this 
folly,  and  that  the  efforts  of  the  Protestant  missions  to  train 
the  Syrian  Christians  in  habits  of  independence,  and  in  the 
duty  of  supporting  their  own  schools  and  churches,  according 
to  their  means,  should  be  frustrated.  How  can  the  people  see 
the  force  of  such  teaching,  when  the  Komanists  and  Eussians 
offer  to  maintain  both  schools  and  churches  free  of  cost,  in 
some  cases  even  rewarding  the  pupils  for  attendance  by  be- 
stowing upon  them  books,  clothing  and  meals  ?  It  is  fortu- 
nate that  the  Syrians  have  no  immediate  use  for  the  Eussian 
language  taught  in  these  benevolent  schools,  and  that  they, 
therefore,  on  the  whole,  prefer  the  English  schools,  which 
prepare  them  for  entrance  into  the  college  in  Beirut.  A  still 
worse  result  of  this  system  of  patronage  is,  however,  that  it 
encourages  the  deep-rooted  national  propensity  to  rear  walls 
of  political  and  racial  partisanship  out  of  religious  differences. 
Those  who  belong  to  the  Greek  Church  rely  on  the  powerful 
protection  of  the  Eussian  consul  or  ambassador,  while  the 
Eomanists  look  to  the  French  officials.  Genuine  religious  in- 
terest is  thus  choked  by  worldly  considerations,  and  the  Prot- 
estant Mission,  which,  because  of  its  American  origin,  is  not 
involved  in  politics,  being  merely  a  servant  of  the  Gospel,  is 
scorned  and  pushed  aside. 

In  the  midst  of  such  contending  and  involved  interests,  the 
Protestant  Mission  has,  nevertheless,  made  satisfactory  prog- 
ress. We  have  seen  how  modest  the  results  were  in  1870, 
the  year  in  which  the  Presbyterians  succeeded  the  American 
Board.  To-day  the  Protestant  Churches  have  formally  re- 
ceived into  their  communion  3,207  members,  scattered  over 
this  mountainous  country.  How  many  children  belong  to 
these  congregations,  or  how  many  adherents  reckon  them- 


228     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

selves  as  Protestants,  it  is  unfortunately  impossible  to  gather 
from  the  reports.  Perhaps  2,300  would  be  a  fair  estimate. 
The  2,600  Presbyterian  Protestants  are  gathered  into  thirty- 
four  churches,  belonging  to  three  presbyteries,  the  largest  be- 
ing the  Sidon  Presbytery  with  1,100  members.  Forty  years 
ago  these  Syrian  Protestants  had  hardly  yet  learned  that  it 
was  their  duty  to  show  their  gratitude  for  the  blessings  of  the 
Gospel  by  contributing  of  their  substance  to  meeting  the  ex- 
penses of  church  and  school.  The  people  expected  to  have 
everything  provided  by  the  Americans ;  thus  in  1852  the  en- 
tire contributions  made  by  Syrians  amounted  to  only  £400. 
But  in  1907  the  suras  received  from  congregations  and  schools 
amounted  to  £10,600,  while  college  fees  added  another 
£11,000.  Two  of  these  presbyteries  raise  for  church  and 
school  requirements  considerably  more  money  than  is  pro- 
vided by  the  Presbyterian  Board  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
mission.  The  congregation  at  Homs  has  made  such  advance 
towards  self-support  that,  with  money  collected  amongst 
themselves  and,  also,  it  is  true,  from  members  who  have  pros- 
pered in  foreign  countries,  it  has  established  a  boys'  boarding- 
school  of  its  own.  The  presbyteries  take  part  also  in  the 
work  of  evangelizing  their  nominally  Christian  countrymen 
by  sending  out  preachers,  whose  salaries  they  pay.  Emigra- 
tion, however,  has  stood  greatly  in  the  way  of  consolidating 
and  developing  the  Syrian  Churches.  By  far  the  best  devel- 
oped missionary  agency  is  the  educational  work.  In  the  year 
1857,  although  from  the  very  beginning  elementary  village 
schools  had  received  special  attention,  as  being  the  most  ef- 
fectual means  of  gaining  a  footing  amongst  the  people,  there 
were  but  thirty  such  schools  with  1,030  pupils.  At  present 
there  are,  apart  from  the  Syrian  Protestant  College,  223 
schools  with  an  attendance  of  12,356.  "  The  pressure  on  us 
from  every  side  for  aid  in  opening  schools  is  almost  irresistible. 
It  increases  every  year.  The  people  jingle  all  the  cash  they 
can  raise  in  our  ears  ;  not  enough,  it  is  true,  to  pay  all  the 
salary,  and  they  add  :  We  can  get  free  schools  from  our  re- 
ligious leaders,  but  yours  are  better,  and  we  want  them,  and 


Syria  and  Palestine  229 

will  pay  all  we  can  to  get  them  "  (Presbyterian  Annual  Re- 
port, 1908,  p.  500). 

It  is,  unfortunately,  true  that  the  hopes  which  were  enter- 
tained ninety  years  ago,  when  the  Syrian  Mission  was  begun, 
have  not  been  realized.  There  has  been  no  general  awaken- 
ing to  newness  of  life  among  the  ancient  Churches,  and  even 
less  among  the  Muhammadans.  Nor  has  the  mission  had  any 
deep  and  abiding  effect  upon  the  numerous  Maronites,  Druses, 
Metawileh  and  Nusairiyeh.  Nevertheless  streams  of  life  have 
flowed  from  it,  bringing  great  blessing  to  the  country.  Every 
sect  and  religion  in  Syria  is  better  to-day  than  it  could  ever 
have  been  without  that  mission.  A  Syrian  shrewdly  remarked, 
"  You  Protestants  are  a  small  sect,  yet  you  have  changed  us 
all."  If  the  sudden  change  in  political  conditions,  which  took 
place  on  the  24th  of  July,  1908,  has  the  effect  of  offering  a 
free  and  equal  field  to  the  competing  forces  of  religious  ac- 
tivity in  Syria,  it  will  then  become  evident  how  great  a  bless- 
ing has  been  conferred  upon  the  Syrian  Churches  by  the  in- 
troduction of  new  vitality,  through  the  agency  of  the  Ameri- 
can Mission. 

(B)  Palestine 
Although  Palestine,  with  its  650,000  inhabitants,  is  geo- 
graphically and  ethnographically  a  province  of  Syria,  it  de- 
serves to  be  separately  treated  on  account  of  its  unique  place 
in  the  history  both  of  the  world,  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
of  Protestant  missions.  To  Jews,  Muhammadans  and  Chris- 
tians alike  it  is  the  Holy  Land.  The  longing  to  be  near  the 
holy  places  and  to  have  a  share  in  them  has  attracted  thither 
members  of  the  most  varied  religious  communities.  The  mix- 
ture of  Churches  and  sects  is  accordingly  even  greater  than 
in  any  other  part  of  the  Near  East.  Especially  in  Jerusalem 
there  is  a  sharp  contest  between  Roman  Catholics,  Greeks, 
Russians  and  Armenians  for  predominance,  and  for  possession 
of  the  ruins,  spun  round  with  their  web  of  traditions.  Nes- 
torians,  Jacobites,  Abyssinians,  Kopts,  Maronites  and  others 
are  also  found  dwelling  there.    But  all  these  are  being  more 


230     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

and  more  surpassed  in  influence  as  well  as  in  numbers  by  the 
Jews,  of  whom  there  are  50,000  to  60,000  among  the  90,000 
inhabitants  of  the  Holy  City.  And  yet  one  cannot  say  that 
Jerusalem  is  a  Jewish  city,  or  makes  the  impression  of  being 
one.  Of  the  500,000  who  inhabit  the  country  outside  Jerusa- 
lem, three-fourths  are  Muhammadan  Arabs,  and  not  more  than 
one-eighth  Christians.  For  the  most  part  Turks  are  found 
there  only  as  officials  or  soldiers  in  the  towns. 

Of  the  entire  population  of  the  country,  about  80,000  are 
Christians,^  Jewish  statistics  give  87,000  Jews,  and  the  rest 
are  Moslems.  The  Arabs,  some  500,000  in  number,  are  on  no 
friendly  terms  with  the  10,000  Turks.  They  are  conscious  of 
belonging  to  the  race  of  the  Prophet,  and  are  angry  that  they 
should  have  been  robbed  by  the  indolent  Turks  of  the  su- 
premacy appointed  to  them  by  Allah.  There  is  said  to  be  a 
strong  feeling  making  headway  among  these  Arabs,  and  those 
dwelling  further  south,  aiming  at  a  great  Arab  Empire  that 
shall  embrace  all  Arabs,  with  Mecca  as  its  capital, — a  Utopian 
dream,  Arabs  and  Turks  are  contemptuous  of  both  Chris- 
tians and  Jews,  though  more  widely  and  profoundly  so  of  the 
Jews.  Their  contempt  for  Christianity  is  often  mixed  with 
hatred,  because  Christians  are  angrily  recognized  as  superior 
rivals.  In  every  possible  way,  therefore,  Christians  of  all 
creeds,  even  European  travellers,  are  made  to  feel  the  Mos- 
lem's disdain.  This  is  a  great  hindrance  to  missions  among 
Muhammadans.  Any  Moslem  embracing  Christianity  could 
not  be  sure  of  his  life  for  a  single  day  ;  those  of  his  own  house- 
hold would  slay  him,  and  the  Turkish  authorities  would  not 
move  a  finger  to  protect  him.  Apart  from  the  12,000  ^  living 
in  the  ancient  Jewish  towns  of  Safed  and  Tiberias  in  Galilee, 
the  Jewish  inhabitants,  till  recently,  consisted  chiefly  of  im- 

'  lu  Palestine,  aa  elsewhere  in  the  Ottoman  Empire,  the  population  can  only 
be  estimated.  Some  of  the  estimates  are  500,000;  650,000  ;  867,000 ;  and  even 
1,000,000. 

'  Of  the  87,000  Jews,  some  55,000  live  in  Jerusalem ;  there  are  8,000  in  Safed, 
3,500  in  Tiberias,  and  a  like  number  in  Jaffa,  7,000  to  8,000  in  twenty-nine  Jew. 
ish  agrioultural  colonies,  and  1,690  in  Haifa. 


Syria  and  Palestine  231 

migrants  in  Jerusalem,  either  pious  old  men  who  wished  to 
die  in  the  Holy  City,  or  lazy  mendicants  who  relied  on  the 
plentiful  chaluica,  the  weekly  doles  supplied  by  European  mil- 
lionaires, amounting  in  1899  to  £80,000.  A.bout  forty  years 
ago  Jewish  philanthropists  began  to  establish  agricultural 
colonies,  where  Jews  from  abroad  were  to  till  the  soil  of  their 
forefathers.  The  Zion  movement  has  given  a  great  impetus 
to  such  colonization.  After  the  failure  of  the  leaders  of  this 
national  movement  to  establish  a  more  or  less  autonomous 
colony  in  British  East  Africa,  Uganda,  Canada,  and  the  Ar- 
gentines, it  was  decided  to  devote  all  their  strength  and  riches 
to  providing  in  Palestine  a  legally  secure  home  for  Jews.  To 
accomplish  this  it  was  necessary  to  purchase  land  on  a  grand 
scale,  and  to  get  rid  of  the  Arab  fellaheen  living  on  it.  With 
the  large  means  at  their  disposal,  they  first  purchased  fertile 
tracts  of  land  in  the  plains  of  Sharon  and  Jezreel.  Careful 
enquiries  were  also  instituted  as  to  the  most  suitable  methods 
of  agriculture.  Success  has  hitherto  attended  these  colonies 
only  in  so  far  as  vast  sums  of  money  have  been  collected  for 
them,  since  the  Jews  coming  from  abroad  have  proved  to  be 
wholly  unsuited  to  the  occupation  of  farming ;  nor  do  well-in- 
formed men  take  a  hopeful  view  of  their  ultimate  success. 
The  expropriation  of  the  native  fellaheen,  who  have  for  ages 
cultivated  the  ground,  is,  therefore,  to  be  deplored.  And  since 
there  is  little  prospect  of  the  establishment  of  a  Jewish  king- 
dom in  Jerusalem,  all  of  the  Christian  Powers  being  opposed 
to  the  Judaizing  of  the  Holy  Land,  Zionism  is  a  chimera,  and 
the  approval  it  finds  in  European  circles  is  only  intelligible  as 
the  expression  of  a  vain  hope  of  thus  easily  getting  rid  of  the 
Jews  in  Europe.  Although  there  is  thus  little  hope  for  Zion- 
ism as  a  political  scheme  of  colonization,  yet  the  movement  is 
so  important,  so  many-sided,  so  well-organized,  that  every 
friend  of  the  Holy  Land  is  bound  to  keep  it  in  view  during 
coming  years.  It  is  pursuing  on  a  grand  scale  all  the  objects' 
which  it  planned.  First  comes  a  general  enquiry  into  the 
economical  conditions  of  the  country.  This  is  carried  out  by 
its  commission  for  the  exploration  of  Palestine,  appointed  by 


232     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  Zionist  congress  at  Basle  in  1904,  its  organ  being  an  excel- 
lent magazine  called  Altneuland.  There  is  an  experimental 
station  in  Athlit,  near  Haifa,  a  farm  near  Hattin  on  the  Sea 
of  Galilee,  and  a  model  farm,  Duleika  um  el  Jun,  to  the  south 
of  the  lake.  Secondly,  as  much  valuable  land  as  possible  is 
to  be  acquired  by  the  Jews,  and  made  national  property ;  it  is 
to  be  planted  with  olive  trees  and  let  out  to  Jewish  tenants. 
Thirdly,  the  building  of  schools  of  all  grades  is  being  pushed. 
There  is  in  Jaffa  a  Hebrew  college,  and  in  Jerusalem  a  tech- 
nical school  to  teach  carpet- weaving  and  other  trades.  In  the 
schools  in  the  agricultural  colonies,  Hebrew  is  spoken  and 
taught.     Malaria  is  being  methodically  fought. 

In  the  carrying  out  of  this  enormous  program,  the  Zionist 
leaders  are  cleverly  and  successfully  arousing  the  interest  of 
Jews  from  all  over  the  world.  In  every  Zionist  association 
the  members  pay  a  fixed  assessment  of  one  shilling  towards 
the  opening  up  of  the  country  of  their  forefathers.  It  is  ad- 
mitted by  the  representatives  of  Zionism  that  the  colonies  es- 
tablished in  Palestine  by  Baron  Rothschild  and  other  mil- 
lionaires were  a  failure.  They  therefore  wish  now  to  proceed 
on  scientific  lines,  and  are  astonishingly  sure  of  success. 

"While  the  Muhammadans,  like  the  Jews,  form,  at  least  out- 
wardly, a  single  religious  community,  the  Christians  are  split 
up  by  reason  of  their  different  sects,  and,  still  more,  by  reason 
of  their  unyielding  national  prejudices.  This  want  of  union 
is  most  apparent  in  the  contests  for  possession  of  the  holy 
places,  contests  which  have  been  going  on  for  centuries  and 
have  become  a  public  scandal. 

The  majority  of  the  Christians  belong  to  the  Orthodox 
Greek  Church,  Arabic  being  the  language  generally  spoken, 
though  the  superior  clergy  mostly  come  from  the  Greeks. 
Although  the  Church  numbers  at  most  51,000  souls,  7,000  of 
whom  live  in  Jerusalem,  they  are  divided  by  this  difference 
of  language  and  nationality.  Since  each  religious  community 
in  Turkey  has  to  provide  its  own  schools,  the  Greek  Patriarch 
can  use  the  schools  he  has  established  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
stilling the  Greek  language  and  culture  into  the  Arab  popula- 


Syria  and  Palestine  233 

tion.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Kussians  cleverly  make  use  of 
the  national  feeling  of  the  Arab  majority  in  the  congregations 
to  undermine  the  influence  of  the  Greek  clergy.  They  en- 
courage the  desire  for  a  native  Arab  patriarch,  because  in  him 
they  hope  to  have  a  willing  tool  for  the  carrying  out  of  their 
policy  in  the  Near  East.  The  Russian  pilgrimages  are  very 
extensive,  fully  10,000  pilgrims  at  a  time  often  staying  for 
months  in  Palestine,  feeling  in  their  simple,  pious,  yet  bigoted 
souls  the  attraction  of  the  holy  places,  to  which  they  are  led 
one  after  the  other.  Their  presence  is  employed  to  the  full 
by  the  Russian  Palestine  Association  to  push  Russian  interests. 
Side  by  side  with  the  Orthodox  Greeks  the  Armenians  have 
hitherto  held  a  leading  position.  Though  only  few  in  num- 
bers (there  are  about  2,000  in  Palestine,  1,000  of  these  being 
in  Jerusalem),  they  are  zealous  and  ready  to  undergo  any  dep- 
rivation in  the  fight  for  the  holy  places.  Since  they  were 
impoverished  by  the  dreadful  occurrences  in  Armenia  during 
the  last  decade,  their  influence  in  Jerusalem  has  waned.  The 
rest  of  the  Oriental  Churches  are  only  slightly  represented. 
Thus  there  are  about  150  Kopts,  100  Syrian  Jacobites  and  100 
Abyssinians.  But  each  of  these  religious  bodies  holds  fast  to 
its  real  or  imaginary  rights  to  the  holy  places. 

To  the  onlooker  the  Oriental  Churches  present  many  points 
of  similarity.  In  all  of  them  public  worship  has  hardened 
into  endless  ritualism  and  formalities  in  an  unintelligible 
language.  Whatever  real  religious  power  there  is  in  them 
manifests  itself  in  the  fear  of  innumerable  evil  spirits, 
sorcerers,  witches,  the  evil  eye,  and  harmful  influences,  and  in 
the  reliance  on  counter  magic,  amulets,  relics,  in  short  on  any 
magical  influences  and  powers  which  can  be  mechanically 
used.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  there  is  an  undercurrent  of 
desire  for  union  with  God,  which  they  seek  to  gain  not  by 
religious  or  ethical  means,  but  by  convulsive  movements, 
hypnotism,  or  other  forms  of  exalted,  abnormal  spiritual  con- 
dition. Veneration  of  the  saints,  and,  in  many  cases,  the 
worship  of  images  and  pictures,  are  rife  among  them.  They 
thus  present  an  altogether  degenerate  form  of  Christianity. 


234     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

It  is  but  a  poor  compensation  that  they  possess  grand  and 
beautiful  liturgical  forms,  and  that  some  of  the  superior 
clergy  are  versed  in  the  wisdom  of  the  church  fathers  of  their 
own  respective  Churches.  Of  the  Koman  Catholic  congrega- 
tions we  have  spoken  in  Chapter  I,  4. 

The  weak  Protestant  Churches  are  also  unfortunately  not 
united.  The  Anglican  Bishop  of  Jerusalem  is  at  variance 
with  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  the  largest  Protestant 
mission  in  the  Holy  Land.  In  Jerusalem,  also,  there  is  an  in- 
dependent company  of  American  and  Swedish  Protestants,  of 
peculiar  religious  views,  known,  from  the  name  of  their 
leader,  as  Spaffordites,  and  numbering  about  two  hundred ; 
but  they  do  no  mission  work. 

Nor  do  the  German  Protestants  form  a  unified  body. 
Most  of  them  belong  to  the  Templars,  a  body  of  Suabians 
who  have  gone  to  Palestine  from  chiliastic  motives. 
Kev.  Christoph  Hoffmann,  a  talented  but  eccentric  theo- 
logian, who  regarded  the  State  Church  as  a  "corpse  decked 
out  with  beautiful  phraseology,"  and  hopelessly  lost,  felt  him- 
self called  to  gather  the  faithful  round  the  "  banner  of  proph- 
ecy," and  to  "  collect  the  people  of  God  in  Jerusalem  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God."  He 
hoped  to  take  a  large  number  of  believers  to  Palestine.  After 
leaving  the  "Wurttemberg  State  Church  in  1859  and  founding 
a  community  called  the  "  German  Temple,"  he  established  his 
first  colony  in  Haifa.  Colonies  at  Jaffa  and  Sarona  were 
founded  in  the  following  years,  and  in  18Y8  a  colony  at 
Jerusalem.  The  difficulties  which  the  colonists  had  to  sur- 
mount were  very  great.  Thanks  to  the  Suabian  persistency 
and  ability  with  which  Hoffmann  entered  upon  his  work,  he 
has  been  successful,  though  not  to  the  extent  he  had  originally 
hoped.  Economically,  the  existence  of  these  Temple  colonies 
seems  to  be  assured.  "  They  possess  the  best  orchards  and 
fields,  they  hold  in  their  hands  trade  and  commerce  and  the 
most  important  industrial  undertakings." 

In  addition  to  these  industrious  and  strenuous,  though 
narrow-minded,  templars,  there  are  small  congregations  in 


Syria  and  Palestine  235 

Jerusalem,  Jaffa  and  Haifa,  affiliated  with  the  Prussian  State 
Church,  the  congregation  in  Jerusalem  being  of  special  im- 
portance owing  to  the  scientific  institutions  connected  with  it, 
which  are  under  the  patronage  of  the  German  Emperor. 

On  the  whole,  the  religious  condition  of  the  Holy  Land  is 
deplorable.  Stock,  in  his  "  History  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society,"  says,  "  Religion  has  been  for  so  many  years 
political,  and  the  Christians  have  been  so  pauperized  by  the 
immense  sums  spent  on  them  by  the  Latin  and  Greek 
Churches,  that  few  of  them  have  an  idea  of  anything  beyond 
a  mere  external  religion ;  while  misrule  and  oppression  have 
degraded  the  fellaheen  to  the  level  of  cattle  "  (Yol.  Ill,  p.  518). 

1.     The  Beginnings  of  Protestant  Missionary  Worlc.     The 
Anglo-Prussian  Episcopate  of  Jerusalem 

{a)  The  Mission  of  the  American  Board.  The  first 
Protestant  missionaries  to  come  to  Jerusalem  were  sent  by 
the  American  Board,  which  occupied  Jerusalem  for  twenty- 
three  years  (1821-1844)  as  a  station  for  mission  work  among 
Oriental  Christians  and,  at  the  same  time,  for  a  mission  among 
the  Jews.  There  were,  however,  months  and  even  years  in 
which  there  was  no  missionary  of  the  Board  there.  Yet  it 
was  here  that  the  Board  gained  its  first  experience  in  its 
unique  work  in  the  Near  East.  The  chief  branch  of  its  work 
was  the  distribution  of  the  Bible,  which  made  it  necessary  for 
the  missionaries  to  travel  about  a  great  deal,  more  so  than 
was  good  for  their  health  in  the  unaccustomed  climate 
and  in  a  land  where  the  roads  were  bad  and  the  means 
of  conveyance  uncomfortable.  The  mission  had  conse- 
quently much  to  suffer  from  the  sickness  and  death  of  its 
members.  One  of  the  two  pioneers,  the  Rev.  Levi  Parsons, 
died  in  1822.  Three  years  later  he  was  followed  by  Pliny 
Fisk,  that  able  and  enthusiastic  missionary.  Twenty  years 
after  this,  after  other  missions  in  the  Near  East  had 
proved  successful,  the  Board  opened  schools  and  a  medical 
mission.  But  Dr.  Dodge,  who  was  sent  out,  died  soon  after 
his  arrival,  from  over-exertion,  while  the  schools  suffered 


236     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

much  from  opposition.  Since,  in  the  meantime,  the  Board's 
missions  in  Syria  had  become  promising,  and  since  English- 
men and  Germans  were  attracted  by  the  newly  established 
episcopate  of  Jerusalem,  the  Board  abandoned  its  work  in 
Palestine  in  1844.  There  had  been  no  visible  results  of  this 
patient  labour  on  the  part  of  the  Americans ;  they  had  only 
been  sowing  the  seed.  Thousands  of  Bibles  and  portions  of 
the  Bible  had  been  distributed,  even  in  the  remotest  parts  of 
Palestine,  and  a  desire  and  demand  for  the  Word  of  God  and 
the  truth  of  the  Gospel  had  been  awakened.  Bishop  Gobat 
"reaped"  where  the  Americans  had  "sown."  (b)  The  be- 
ginning of  the  English  Mission  among  the  Jews.  While  the 
Americans  were  engaged  in  more  exploratory  work,  the 
London  Society  for  Promoting  Christianity  among  the  Jews 
commenced  an  extensive  work  in  Jerusalem.  This  Society 
was  founded  in  1809,  originally  on  an  interdenominational 
basis;  since  1815,  however,  it  has  been  an  almost  exclusively 
Anglican  effort.  High  hopes  were  entertained  at  the  outset. 
The  first  step  should  be  to  gather  the  whole  Jewish  race  into 
Palestine,  and  Jews  must  therefore  be  encouraged  to  im- 
migrate ;  after  that,  mission  work  should  be  begun  on'a  grand 
scale.  Fortunately  for  the  Society  it  had,  in  J.  Nicolayson, 
an  able  and  level-headed  representative  in  Jerusalem  from 
1826  to  1856.  A  favourable  time  appeared  to  be  coming  for 
the  mission,  when  from  1832  to  1840  the  Egyptian  rebel, 
Viceroy  Muhammad  Ali,  was  in  power  in  Palestine,  for  his 
attitude  towards  the  mission  was  friendly  and  tolerant.  Ad- 
vantage was  taken  of  this  opportunity,  and  the  mission  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  so-called  Zion  church,  the  first 
Protestant  church  in  the  Turkish  dominions.  It  was  un- 
fortunate that  it  was  not  finished  before  1840,  for,  when 
the  Sultan  succeeded,  with  the  assistance  of  the  European 
Powers,  in  recapturing  Palestine,  he  followed  an  even  stricter 
policy  of  repression  than  before.  Thus  the  completion  of  the 
church  was  delayed  by  endless  negotiations  until  1849.  In 
Nicolayson's  time,  and  with  his  help,  most  of  the  large  in- 
stitutions were  founded,  that  are  so  characteristic  a  feature  of 


Syria  and  Palestine  237 

this  Society's  work ;  the  hospital  in  1843,  the  first  of  its  kind 
in  the  Near  East ;  the  industrial  school  for  converts  from 
among  the  Jews,  intended  to  test  the  sincerity  of  their 
motives,  as  well  as,  after  their  baptism,  to  secure  them  a 
livelihood  ;  the  converts'  home ;  even  a  training-school,  which 
was  temporarily  (1843-1849)  expanded  into  a  mission  col- 
lege, as  a  central  training-institution  for  converted  Jews, 
who  were  to  engage  in  mission  work.  All  these  various 
branches  of  the  work  were  developing  vigorously  and  seemed 
to  require  the  guidance  of  a  strong  central  authority,  (c)  The 
Anglo- Prussian  episcopate.  The  establishment  of  an  Anglo- 
Prussian  episcopate  in  Jerusalem  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
episodes  of  mission  history  in  the  Near  East.  Frederick 
William  lY,  the  idealist  King  of  Prussia,  was  the  originator 
and  motive  power  of  this  arrangement.  He  had  four  far- 
reaching  thoughts  which  he  hoped  to  see  realized  in  this  way. 
For  one  thing,  his  evangelical  heart  felt  impelled  to  create  in 
the  midst  of  the  petrified  and  degenerate  Oriental  Churches  a 
centre  of  Protestant  activity,  the  spirit  of  which  should 
regenerate  those  Churches.  He  also  wished  to  procure  legal 
recognition  and  equal  rights  for  the  Protestants,  scattered 
throughout  Turkey,  who,  up  to  this  time,  had  enjoyed  no 
legal  status.  This  he  tried  to  effect  by  the  means  customary 
in  Turkey,  namely,  through  the  authorization  of  an  ecclesias- 
tical supreme  head.  In  the  third  place,  he  desired  to  provide 
for  the  Jewish  Mission,  which  was  at  that  time  beginning  to 
flourish,  firm  support  and  a  secure  centre  of  activity,  and  he 
hoped  that  the  episcopate  would  afford  such  a  centre.  He 
held  the  opinion  that  a  firmly  established  Jewish  mission  on  a 
large  scale  in  Jerusalem  would  attract  the  attention  of  all 
Jews.  And,  lastly,  he  particularly  desired  to  unite  the  great 
Protestant  Churches  in  common  work  for  the  spread  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God ;  a  union  of  the  Churches  of  England  and 
Prussia,  resting  on  the  foundation  of  common  church  work, 
was  his  highest  ideal. 

Here  were  idealist  plans  and  purposes  enough,  if  the  Jeru- 
salem episcopate  was  really  to  become  a  thing  of  life,  with  an 


238     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

intelligible,  practical  task.  Yet  still  other  hopes  of  a  different 
character  were  entertained  in  Anglican  circles,  in  connection 
with  this  arrangement.  Study  of  the  prophets  had  convinced 
the  leaders  of  the  Jewish  Mission  that  the  return  of  the  Jews 
to  Palestine  was  imminent.  They  planned,  therefore,  to  found 
a  Church  in  Palestine  in  connection  with  the  Jewish  Christian 
congregation,  which  had,  with  much  labour,  been  gathered  in 
Jerusalem.  This  Church  was  to  be,  indeed,  Anglican  in  its 
organization,  yet  at  the  same  time  it  was  to  be  an  independent 
Jewish  Church.  When,  therefore,  the  European  Powers  had 
driven  the  Egyptian  Viceroy,  Muhammad  Ali,  out  of  Syria,  it 
was  hoped  in  England  that,  with  the  support  of  the  govern- 
ment, which  friends  of  the  movement  sought  to  gain,  Pales- 
tine would  now  be  thrown  open  to  a  general  immigration  of 
the  Jews.  Still  another  prospect  opened  out  to  the  high 
church  wing  of  the  Church  of  England,  when  the  project  of 
Frederick  William  IV  became  known.  They  hoped  that  a 
union  with  the  Church  of  Prussia  would  secure  such  pre- 
dominance for  the  Church  of  England  that  the  "historic 
episcopate  "  would  be  introduced  into  Prussia  also,  an  idea 
that  was,  as  is  well  known,  sympathetically  entertained  by  the 
Prussian  king.  And,  lastly,  there  was  thus  a  prospect  that 
the  "  diocese  of  St.  James  "  might  be  restored  in  Jerusalem. 
St.  James  the  Just,  the  brother  of  our  Lord,  \j^%  par  excel- 
lence  the  Apostle  of  the  Circumcision.  Only  Jews  had  filled 
the  episcopal  throne  of  St.  James  up  to  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  under  Hadrian.  This  apostolate  of  the  circum- 
cision was  now  to  be  restored  by  the  establishment  of  a  specif- 
ically Jewish  Christian  episcopate  in  the  Holy  City,  so  that 
an  "  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  such  as,  for  instance,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  might  some  day  indite  a  new  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews." 

These  hopes  and  expectations  are  indicative  of  the  thoughts 
and  wishes  entertained  by  Christian  circles  in  Prussia  and 
England  in  1840.  But,  with  this  mixture  of  numerous  and 
diverse  motives  before  him,  no  one  will  be  astonished  that  the 
practical  result  stood  in  no  proportion  to  such  expectations. 


Syria  and  Palestine  239 

To  be  sure,  the  episcopate  was  an  accomplished  fact  within  a 
few  months,  but  it  was  a  specifically  Anglican  episcopate  and 
Prussia's  influence  upon  it  was  almost  nil.  Prussia  enjoyed 
merely  the  honour  of  contributing  £600  a  year  towards  the 
salary  of  the  bishop,  and  the  right  to  appoint  every  alternate 
bishop,  who  must,  however,  be  an  Anglican. 

The  British  crown  appointed  Salomo  Alexander,  a  learned 
Jewish  Christian,  as  the  first  bishop.  He  was  a  Polish  Jew 
from  Prussian  Posen,  and  was  at  that  time  a  professor  in  a 
college  in  London.  But  he  died  too  soon  to  be  able  to  display 
any  great  activity.  As  his  successor.  King  Frederick  William 
lY  appointed  Samuel  Gobat,  who  had  returned  to  Europe  in 
shattered  health,  after  his  romantic  activity  in  Abyssinia  (cf. 
Chap.  YI,  B,  1),  and  was  principal  of  a  mission  college  in 
the  island  of  Malta  when  Frederick  William  the  Fourth's  call 
came  to  him.  He  accepted  it  with  joy.  The  history  of  his 
thirty-three  years'  episcopate  (1846-1879)  has  proved  that  the 
King's  choice  was  an  excellent  one.  Whatever  Protestant 
missionary  work  there  is  at  the  present  time  in  the  Holy 
Land  is  to  be  traced  directly  or  indirectly  to  Bishop  Gobat. 
His  sane,  impressive  and  determined  personality  enabled 
Protestant  missions  to  take  root  in  the  stony  soil  of  the 
neglected  country.  When  Bishop  Gobat  arrived  in  Jerusalem 
in  December,  1846,  he  encountered  difficulties  on  every  hand. 
Though  "  Bishop  of  Palestine,  Syria,  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia," 
he  had  but  one  parish  in  his  diocese — Jerusalem,  with  its  forty 
or  fifty  communicants ;  there  were  newly  begun  mission 
stations  for  Jews  only  in  Jaffa  and  Safed.  Outside  Jerusalem, 
his  task,  therefore,  was  to  create  a  Protestant  people.  But 
where  ?  Mission  work  amongst  the  Muhammadans  was,  to  be- 
gin with,  out  of  the  question,  because  of  the  suspicious 
vigilance  of  the  Turkish  government.  And  to  have  won  con- 
verts from  the  Orthodox  Greeks  would  have  offended  the 
high  church  party  in  England,  who  regarded  the  Greek  Church 
as  a  sister,  with  equal  ecclesiastical  claims. 

The  labour  of  the  Americans  had  spread  some  little  knowl- 
edge of  evangelical  truth  in  the  Holy  Land,  in  spite  of  the 


240     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

fact  that  the  Romanists  had  induced  the  authorities  to  forbid 
the  selling  of  Bibles  and  to  order  the  burning  of  any  copies 
that  might  be  found.  And  now,  since  the  oppressed  Chris- 
tians were  always  on  the  lookout  for  help  from  a  powerful 
friend  who  could  protect  them  against  the  Turks,  the  ener- 
getic action  of  Protestant  England  and  Prussia  attracted  the 
attention  of  many.  Bishop  Gobat  made  use  of  these  feeble 
and  mixed  motives.  He  engaged  people  who  were  able  to 
read,  without  demanding  of  them  that  they  should  leave  their 
own  Churches,  and  commissioned  them  to  go  through  the 
country  reading  the  Bible  and  talking  with  the  people  about 
what  had  been  ^read.  The  success  of  this  scheme  was  sur- 
prising. As  soon  as  these  simple  people  opened  their  Bibles 
in  the  streets  or  public  places jn  towns  and  villages,  the  people 
crowded  round  them  to  listen,  and  often  showed  signs  of  be- 
ing touched.  Individuals  often  came  in  the  evening  to  the 
lodgings  of  Bible-readers,  confessing  their  sins  with  tears  in 
their  eyes,  and  asking  to  be  instructed  in  the  way  of  salvation. 
There  was  a  general  movement  throughout  the  country. 
People  seemed  to  become  aware  of  their  deplorable  ignorance 
and  to  long  for  the  simple  truth  of  the  Bible.  It  was  a 
favourable  circumstance  that  just  then  the  Sultan  issued  the 
firman  of  1850,  recognizing  the  Protestant  Church,  and  giving 
it  a  legal  status  in  his  empire.  Bishop  Gobat  was  watching 
this  movement  from  his  quiet  dwelling  near  David's  Tower  ia^ 
Jerusalem.  Hardly  a  week  passed  in  which  some  petition  or 
deputation  did  not  arrive  from  one  place  or  another  in  Pales- 
tine, asking  for  missionaries,  teachers  for  the  young,  church 
buildings  and  Protestant  schools.  Nablus  and  Nazareth,  Jaffa 
and  Ramleh,  Bethlehem  and  Ramallah,  became  centres  of  the 
movement.  There  were,  to  be  sure,  times  when  the  contest 
raged  fiercely.  In  1848  Bishop  Gobat  received  a  letter  signed 
by  several  Greek  Christians  in  Nablus,  declaring  their  resolve 
to  leave  their  Church,  since  they  were  being  kept  in  a  state  of 
ignorance.  Bishop  Gobat  exhorted  them  not  to  take  such  a 
step  without  earnest  consideration,  yet  he  sent  a  missionary 
to  them  to  enquire  more  closely  into  the  state  of  things. 


Syria  and  Palestine  241 

This  man  found  four  hundred  Greeks  ready  to  join  the 
Protestants.  Thereupon  the  Bishop  decided  to  take  them 
under  his  care.  He  quietly  bought  a  house,  which  he  ar- 
ranged as  a  school  for  boys  and  girls,  with  quarters  for  the 
teachers  in  it.  As  soon  as  this  became  known  in  Nablus,  the 
storm  broke.  Two  of  the  leading  Arab  Protestants  were 
thrown  into  prison  and  condemned  to  death,  and  Bishop 
Gobat  rescued  them  only  with  difficulty,  through  the  influence 
of  the  Governor  of  Jerusalem.  But  the  Greeks  had  become 
alarmed  and  hesitated  now  to  join  the  Protestant  Church. 
Gobat's  "  Bible-school,"  however,  flourished,  and  its  teacher 
proved  himself  to  be  a  steadfast  man,  on  whom  reliance  could 
be  placed.  His  opponents  resorted  to  all  manner  of  intrigue ; 
they  established  opposition  schools  and  searched  the  houses  for 
Bibles,  burning  all  they  could  discover,  and  fining  the  people 
who  had  possessed  them.  When  these  measures  failed,  the 
Greek  Bishop  excommunicated  the  refractory.  But  the  people 
would  not  give  way,  nor  could  Bishop  Gobat  retire ;  he  there- 
fore decided  to  collect  the  excommunicated  into  a  Protestant 
congregation.  Throughout  the  Holy  Land  a  similar  develop- 
ment took  place  ;  but  everywhere  Bishop  Gobat  counselled 
patience.  Yet  when  the  people  had  been  thrust  out  of  their 
Churches,  there  was  nothing  left  but  to  receive  them  into  the 
Protestant  Church  and  to  form  them  into  congregations.  Al- 
most more  disquieting  and  threatening  were  opposition  and 
disapproval  in  England.  For  his  ever-extending  charitable 
work  he  had  to  depend  on  the  sympathy  and  support  of  Eng- 
lish and  German  Christians.  Now,  if  to  many  in  the  Church 
of  England  the  whole  of  the  Anglo-Prussian  episcopate  had 
been  an  offense,  this  forming  of  members  of  the  Greek  Ortho- 
dox Church  into  separate  congregations  was  an  abomination. 
For  they  were  so  blindly  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  episcopal 
Greek  Church,  as  to  recognize  in  it  a  worthy  sister  of  their  own. 
In  fact  they  felt  themselves  more  nearly  related  to  it  than  to 
the  Evangelical  Church  of  Germany.  As  a  result,  there  oc- 
curred long  and  painful  transactions,  bitter  accusation  and 
unpleasant  controversy  in  the  press.     Yet  Bishop  Gobat  kept 


242     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

steadfastly  on  his  way ;  and  even  the  bishops  who  were 
called  on  to  give  their  decisions,  had  to  acknowledge  that  he 
was  in  the  right,  when  he  gathered  into  congregations  those 
who  had  been  excommunicated  from  the  Greek  Church.  The 
rupture  in  the  Greek  Church  caused  by  the  formation  of 
Protestant  congregations,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  long  con- 
tinued hostility  of  Anglicans,  on  the  other,  had  the  result  of 
bringing  the  entire  hopeful  movement  to  a  standstill.  Those 
who  had  already  been  converted  remained  for  the  most  part 
faithful,  but  conversions  became  year  by  year  less  frequent. 

One  of  Bishop  Gobat's  tasks  was  the  care  of  the  Jewish 
Mission,  on  which  the  English  friends  of  the  episcopate  laid 
great  stress.  ISTor  did  he  lack  able  assistants  in  his  work,  for 
the  London  Jewish  Society  placed  their  best  men  at  his  dis- 
posal. Thus  he  was  enabled  to  found  his  "  diocesan  school," 
a  well  conducted  boys'  school,  which  still  does  good  work  in 
Jerusalem,  directing  its  attention  mainly  to  Jewish  children. 
It  was  a  time  of  quiet  growth  for  the  Jewish  Mission.  The 
only  notable  event  was  that  the  mission,  in  185Y,  took  over 
from  the  volunteer  missionary.  Miss  Cooper,  her  girls'  school 
and  her  industrial  home  for  poor  women ;  these  institutions 
were  now  considerably  enlarged. 

2.  The  Mission  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
As  soon  as  the  first  converts  had  attached  themselves  to 
Bishop  Gobat,  and  had  been  by  him  received  into  the  Protes- 
tant Church,  he  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  make  permanent 
provision  for  the  supply  of  their  spiritual  needs ;  for,  lacking 
this,  the  congregations  could  not  flourish,  and  many  would 
probably  return  to  their  old  Church.  He  naturally  turned 
first  to  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  in  whose  service  he 
had  been  for  twenty  years,  and  with  which  he  felt  himself 
most  closely  related  in  faith  and  practice.  He  was  the  more 
encouraged  to  do  this,  since  that  Society  had,  almost  from  the 
time  of  its  inception,  been  carrying  on  a  mission  work  in  the 
Near  East.  It  was,  however,  this  very  fact  that  caused  the 
Society  to  hesitate  to  grant  the  Bishop's  request,  for  their  work 


Syria  and  Palestine  243 

in  the  Near  East  was  about  to  be  abandoned,  after  having 
accomplished  but  little,  in  spite  of  the  large  sums  spent  upon 
it  and  the  able  missionaries  that  had  been  employed  in  it. 
Yet  the  fact  that  it  was  the  Holy  Land  in  which  they  were 
asked  to  help,  led  the  Society  to  comply  with  Bishop  Gobat's 
request.  In  1851  it  renewed  its  work  in  the  Near  East,  thus 
entering  upon  its  second  period  of  activity  there.  The  history 
of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  in  Palestine  falls 
into  two  periods,  each  of  about  thirty  years'  duration,  Bishop 
Gobat's  death  in  1879  being  the  dividing  point.  During  the 
first  period  work  was  carried  on  on  a  small  scale  and  with 
very  limited  means,  being  confined  for  twenty  years  to  the 
two  stations,  Jerusalem  and  Nazareth,  Apart  from  a  few 
English  missionaries,  who  always  held  the  office  of  Secretary 
and  to  a  certain  extent  managed  the  work,  the  members  of 
the  mission  were  Germans.  These  were  able  men,  and  their 
terms  of  service  were  extraordinarily  lengthy,  a  circumstance 
which  was  of  great  importance,  since  the  work  demanded 
thorough  local  and  personal  acquaintance  with  all  the  diffi- 
culties connected  with  it. 

Christian  Fallscheer,  of  Wiirtteraberg,  a  locksmith  by  trade, 
came,  in  1862,  from  the  St.  Chrischona  Mission  House  to 
Jerusalem.  After  helping  Bishop  Gobat  in  the  diocesan 
school  on  Mount  Zion,  he  was  sent  by  the  Bishop  to  Nablus 
in  1864.  Nablus  is  one  of  the  most  fanatical  Moslem  towns 
in  Palestine.  No  European  had  been  able  to  live  there.  In 
spite  of  all  hindrances  Fallscheer  settled  in  the  town,  and,  by 
his  patience,  gained  a  footing  in  it  for  the  mission.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  building  a  church  and  parsonage,  and  opened  the 
way  for  the  lady  missionaries  who  came.  Thanks  to  his  tact 
in  dealing  with  the  government,  permission  was  granted  to 
build  a  mission  hospital.  Little  known  or  noticed  outside 
Palestine,  he  was  celebrated  throughout  that  country  for  his 
hospitality  and  his  liberality.  In  Nablus  itself  he  won  the 
respect  of  all,  including  the  Muhammadans,  by  his  humility 
and  childlike  piety.  When  he  died.  Christians  and  Moslems 
alike  said  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  "  Our  father  is  dead  and 


244     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

we  are  orphans."  Muhammadans  even  requested  the  honour 
of  being  permitted  to  carry  his  coflBn  from  the  church  to  the 
grave. 

Johannes  Zeller,  a  countryman  of  Fallscheer's,  was  a  man 
of  greater  intellect  and  talent.  He  arrived  before  Fallscheer, 
in  1857.  He  laboured  for  twenty  years  in  Nazareth,  and  for 
an  equal  period  in  Jerusalem.  By  his  persevering  energy,  he, 
like  Fallscheer  in  Nablus,  developed  the  mission  work  in 
Nazareth.  After  years  of  labour,  he  experienced  in  1871  the 
joy  of  witnessing  the  dedication  of  a  church  there,  the  build- 
ing of  which  he  himself  had  superintended.  At  his  request, 
the  Female  Education  Society  founded  in  Nazareth  an 
orphanage  and  several  day-schools,  which  were  afterwards 
transferred  to  the  Church  Missionary  Society.  Also  at 
Zeller's  invitation,  a  Scottish  medical  missionary  settled  in 
Nazareth  and  began  a  work,  which  was  gradually  extended. 
Zeller's  interest  was  more  and  more  centred  in  a  task  that  had 
till  then  been  neglected  in  Palestine,  namely,  the  training  of 
educated  teachers.  "With  a  view  to  his  being  able  to  devote 
himself  entirely  to  this  work,  he  was  removed  to  Jerusalem 
to  take  charge  of  the  Bishop  Gobat  School,  as  well  as  to  found 
a  "  Preparandi  Institute  "  for  teachers.  In  spite  of  frequent 
disappointments  he  had  the  joy  of  seeing  many  of  his  pupils 
turn  out  well ;  eight  of  them  were  ordained  as  preachers,  after 
many  years  of  successful  teaching.  During  his  stay  of  forty- 
six  years  in  Palestine,  Zeller  had  made  the  country  his  second 
home.  Canon  Tristram  once  said  of  Zeller  that  he  was  the 
only  European  who  could  venture  to  pass  through  the  whole 
of  Palestine  without  a  military  escort.  He  was  known  every- 
where, and  was  distinguished  from  Greek  and  Latin  priests  as 
the  "  priest  of  the  Book."  Canon  Tristram  once  told  a  sheikh 
that  Zeller  was  his  friend  and  brother,  to  which  the  reply 
came,  "  Then  you,  too,  are  one  of  the  Bible  Christians  !  "  In 
his  seventy-first  year,  in  the  summer  of  1901,  Zeller  left 
Palestine  to  return  to  his  home  in  Germany.  On  the  19th 
of  February,  1902,  heart-failure  put  an  end  to  his  laborious 
life. 


Syria  and  Palestine  245 

Theodore  Friedrich  Wolters  was  sent  to  Smyrna  in  1860, 
and  held  this  staMon  quite  alone  for  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  till  1876.  He  was  then  removed  to  Palestine,  where 
he  engaged  in  pastoral  work,  chiefly  in  Jaffa,  for  thirty 
years,  until  1907.  He  was  president  of  the  "  Native  Church 
Council." 

A.  F.  Klein  was  the  missionary  who,  with  Dr.  Sandreczky, 
began  the  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  in  Palestine 
in  1851.  He  became  renowned  in  Europe  in  1868  by  his 
discovery  of  the  famous  Moabite  stone.  When  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  had  to  restrict  its  work  in  1878,  for  want 
of  means,  Klein  was  recalled  to  Europe,  but  later,  in  1882,  he 
had  the  honour  of  beginning  the  mission  of  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  in  Egypt.  He  died  in  England  on  the  1st  of 
December,  1903. 

The  end  of  the  seventies  was  a  critical  time  in  the  history 
of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  in  Palestine. 
Bishop  Gobat's  advanced  age  placed  the  question  before  the 
directing  board,  whether,  at  his  death,  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  should  take  over  his  entire  mission  work  as  he  pro- 
posed. Against  such  a  course  was  the  feeble  financial  con- 
dition of  the  Society ;  apd  even  more  threatening  was  the 
animosity  of  the  ritualists,  who  regarded  with  disfavour 
Bishop  Gobat's  "  proselytizing "  among  members  of  the 
Oriental  Churches.  There  was  to  be  an  extremely  painful 
public  discussion  between  the  Church  Missionary  Society  and 
its  opponents.  We  must  anticipate  the  course  of  events.  Upon, 
the  death  of  Bishop  Gobat,  the  British  crown  appointed  as 
Bishop  of  Jerusalem  Josejph  Barclay^  formerly  a  missionary 
among  the  Jews.  Unfortunately  he  died  two  years  later. 
After  his  death  there  was  no  bishop  appointed  for  several 
years,  since  Prussia,  to  whom  the  nomination  now  fell,  could 
not  find  in  Germany  a  suitable  Anglican  clergyman  to  repre- 
sent its  interests  in  Palestine.  Finally  the  agreement  between 
England  and  Prussia  was  cancelled.  England  now  appointed 
G.  F.  P.  Blyth,  a  high  churchman,  as  bishop,  a  man  who  had 
little  sympathy  with    the    evangelical    Church   Missionary 


246     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Society.  He  insisted  that  the  priest  should  turn  to  the  east 
during  the  saying  of  the  creed,  that  lighted  candles  should  be 
on  the  altar,  that  wine  should  be  mixed  with  water  at  the 
eucharist,  that  the  celebration  of  the  eucharist  should  be  only 
in  the  morning,  and  the  like.  It  was  painful  to  see  a  man 
with  such  ideals  at  the  head  of  the  English  Protestant  Mission 
in  Palestine.  Violent  collision  with  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  was  inevitable.  In  December,  1890,  the  Bishop,  in 
his  "  primary  charge,"  accused  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
missionaries  of  inexcusable  proselytism  among  the  Oriental 
Churches,  and  claimed  the  management  of  the  entire  missionary 
work.  A  conference  of  Anglican  bishops  held  an  enquiry,  and 
their  verdict  was  essentially  in  favour  of  the  Church  Mission- 
ary Society.  Bishop  Blyth  had,  in  addition,  minor  complaints, 
and  made  the  following  charges : — (1)  that  he  was  not  a 
member  of  the  Missionary  Conference  in  Palestine ;  (2)  that 
the  missionaries  presented  to  him  for  confirmation  persons 
who  had  in  infancy  received  the  "  chrism "  of  the  Greek 
Church  after  baptism  ;  (3)  that  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
was  guilty  of  "  proselytism."  The  Conference  of  Bishops 
gave  it  as  their  opinion  (1)  that  the  bishop's  membership  in  the 
Missionary  Conference  was  not  desirable,  as  being  scarcely 
consistent  with  the  dignity  of  his  position,  and  they  recom- 
mended that  he  should  rather  summon  a  diocesan  synod, 
which  would  be  attended  both  by  Church  Missionary  Society 
missionaries  and  by  other  clergy  ;  (2)  that  the  bishop  ought 
not  to  refuse  confirmation  to  those  who  intelligently  and 
conscientiously  desired  it;  (3)  that  the  charge  of  proselytism 
had  not  been  proved ;  it  appeared,  rather,  that  this  was  al- 
together contrary  to  the  instructions  issued  by  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  (Stock,  "  History  of  the  Church  Mission- 
ary Society,"  Yol.  Ill,  pp.  523  ff.). 

Bishop  Blyth  did  not  give  way.  There  was  therefore  the 
unedifying  spectacle  in  Jerusalem  of  two  parties  in  the  Angli- 
can Church,  working  on  different  principles.  Bishop  Blyth 
was  merely  the  representative  of  the  views  and  feelings  of  the 
ritualists,   who  were  gaining  more  and  more  influence  in 


Syria  and  Palestine  247 

England.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  had  always  to  be 
careful  not  to  give  offense.  Quite  apart  from  this  friction, 
mission  work  among  Oriental  Christians  in  Palestine,  and  the 
care  of  the  congregations  of  converts,  were  a  difficult  and  not 
very  promising  task.  Kev.  C.  T.  "Wilson,  the  well-known 
missionary  in  Uganda,  who  was  at  that  time  w^orking  in 
Palestine,  characterized  the  situation  in  a  report  in  which  he 
said,  "  The  conviction  is  growing  stronger  that  the  day  of 
gracious  visitations  is  rapidly  coming  to  an  end  for  the  Chris- 
tians of  this  country.  This  applies  only  to  the  Greek  Chris- 
tians, for  they  are  almost  the  only  ones  who  have  come  under 
the  influence  of  the  mission.  The  Eoman  clergy  hold  their 
flock  so  firmly  that  no  unwelcome  influences  can  touch  them. 
For  instance,  one  often  hears  that  the  Roman  priests  tell  their 
people  that  it  is  much  better  for  people  to  be  Moslems  than 
Protestants,  an  evidence  of  a  bigotry  unknown  among  the 
Greeks.  But  in  spite  of  many  points  of  contact  between  us 
and  the  Greeks,  the  Gospel  has  made  little  progress  among 
them  in  the  last  years.  We  seem  to  have  reached  a  point 
beyond  which  we  cannot  go.  It  is  true  that  our  schools  still 
dispel  ignorance  of  divine  truth,  break  the  charms  of  super- 
stition and  prejudice  and  lighten  the  yoke  of  priestly  domina- 
tion. But  such  enlightenment  does  not  lead,  in  by  far  the 
most  cases,  to  true  conversion.  It  can  quite  well  rest  in  the 
same  heart  side  by  side  with  unbounded  veneration  of  the 
Greek  Church  and  observance  of  superstitious  customs.  We 
are  as  far  as  ever  from  a  reformation  of  this  Church."  So 
there  was  a  strong  inclination  for  some  years  to  restrict  the 
work  as  much  as  possible.  One  of  the  first  steps  in  this 
direction  was  the  recalling  of  several  able  missionaries,  such 
as  A.  F.  Klein.  But  just  at  that  time  a  change  became  ap- 
parent in  the  circles  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  which 
was  destined  to  have  a  great  effect  on  the  mission  in  Palestine. 
In  18Y5  General  Lake,  an  influential  member  of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  committee,  called  a  conference  of  Church 
Missionary  Society  missionaries  among  Muhammadans.  At 
this  conference  he  set  forth  with  emphasis  the  problems  and 


248     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

tasks  awaiting  this  practically  new  branch  of  their  work. 
Unfortunately,  Lake  died  before  any  definite  conclusion  had 
been  arrived  at,  so  that  the  whole  movement,  initiated  by 
him,  was  threatened  with  extinction.  Yet  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  recognized  that  Palestine  was  a  strategic  land 
for  such  an  undertaking  among  Muhammadans.  The  Society 
accordingly  abandoned  their  plan  of  restricting  the  work,  and, 
at  Bishop  Gobat's  death,  took  over  the  whole  of  his  mission^ 
including,  in  addition  to  some  schools  in  Ramleh,  Lydda  and 
elsewhere,  his  diocesan  school  in  Jerusalem,  the  important 
station  at  Nablus,  and,  above  all,  the  German  missionaries, 
who  were  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  country.  In 
thus  determining,  however,  to  engage  in  work  in  Palestine  on 
a  large  scale,  and  with  a  considerable  force,  the  Society  felt 
the  necessity  of  giving  its  work  a  different  form,  to  correspond 
with  the  new  purpose  which  it  held.  Hitherto,  under  Bishop 
Gobat's  influence,  the  Societ}^  had  engaged  almost  exclusively 
in  mission  work  among  the  Greek  Christians,  and  in  the  care 
of  the  congregations  formed  from  among  them  ;  now  it  must 
methodically  organize  a  mission  among  Muhammadans.  The 
new  era  in  the  work  of  the  mission  was  introduced  in  three 
ways  ;  first  of  all,  by  an  energetic  extension  of  the  work  over 
the  whole  of  Palestine.  Es-Salt,  east  of  the  Jordan,  in  the 
ancient  Gilead,  had  been  for  ages  an  autonomous  town,  which, 
however,  paid  tribute  to  Turkey.  When,  in  1866,  the  Turkish 
government  in  Damascus  extended  its  authority  in  this  direc- 
tion and  placed  a  Turkish  garrison  in  Es-Salt,  Bishop  Gobat 
sent  a  Syrian  catechist  thither.  A  Jesuit  Mission  also  made 
its  appearance  there,  and  by  bribery  induced  many  Greek 
Christians  to  join  the  Church  of  Rome.  Bishop  Gobat  had 
only  Christian  truth  to  offer,  yet  he  gained  a  footing,  and  the 
congregation  grew  to  be  one  of  the  most  promising  in  the 
Holy  Land.  It  was  necessary,  however,  that  a  missionary 
should  be  stationed  there,  and,  the  Bishop  not  having  such  an 
one  at  his  disposal,  the  station  was  transferred  in  1873  to  the 
Church  Missionary  Society.  To  the  northeast,  further  in- 
land, in  the  rocky  district  of  Hauran,  the  Church  Missionary 


Syria  and  Palestine  249 

Society  took  over  several  schools  for  Druse  children,  which, 
however,  had  to  be  abandoned  on  account  of  Turkish  intoler- 
ance. In  Gaza,  formerly  one  of  the  cities  of  the  Philistines, 
and  at  present  the  second  largest  town  in  Palestine,  lying  on 
the  caravan  route  to  Egypt,  Pritchet,  an  Englishman,  had 
established  schools  as  a  part  of  his  "  Philistine  Mission," 
which  he  was  glad  to  hand  over  to  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  in  1878.  In  Kerak,  the  ancient  Kir  in  the  land  of 
Moab,  a  Wesleyan,  named  Lethaby,  began  an  independent 
mission  in  1883,  which,  however,  he  had  not  sufficient  means 
to  carry  on,  especially  as  the  Turkish  authorities  were  con- 
tinually throwing  new  obstacles  in  his  way.  Although  the 
place  was  only  about  one  hundred  miles  from  Jerusalem,  it 
was  diflBcult  to  reach  ;  yet  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
took  it  over  in  1894.  It  was  hard  work.  The  Turkish 
Governor  was  determined  that  missions  should  not  succeed  ; 
for  months  he  placed  a  soldier  on  sentry  duty  at  the  gates  of 
the  settlement,  to  prevent  the  entrance  of  any  Moslem.  The 
schools  were  also  closed  through  the  intrigues  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Greek  Church.  But  patient  perseverance  overcame 
all  these  obstacles.  As  the  great  caravan  road  of  the 
Mecca  pilgrims,  the  darb  i  haj,  and  the  new  Hejaz  Kail- 
way  pass  close  to  Kerak,  the  latter  is  a  very  suitable 
centre  from  which  to  itinerate.  Yet  lack  of  funds  has 
compelled  the  Society  to  abandon  the  station.  At  Acca, 
on  the  coast,  the  Church  Missionary  Society  established  a 
station  in  1890,  with  the  purpose  of  reaching  the  leaders 
of  the  Babist  movement,  who  had  been  banished  to  that 
town. 

In  Bethlehem,  Nazareth  and  Shefa  Amr  the  Female  Educa- 
tion Society  had  for  decades  flourishing  girls'  boarding-schools* 
These,  too,  were  subsequently  transferred  to  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  (1902). 

In  this  way  the  work  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
grew  into  a  spreading  tree,  its  branches  reaching  from  Gaza  in 
the  south  to  Nazareth  in  the  north,  from  Jaffa  in  the  west 
to  Es-Salt  and  Kerak  in  the  land  east  of  the  Jordan,  thus 


250     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

casting  its  shadow  over  the  whole  of  the  Holy  Land.  This 
local  extension  was  accompanied  by  a  growth  of  internal 
power,  the  result  of  the  addition  of  two  new  and  important 
agencies,  namely,  the  work  of  lady  missionaries  and  medical 
mission  work. 

The  Keswick  Conferences  had  been  asked  by  the  mission- 
aries in  Palestine  to  send  lady  missionaries,  and,  after  1887, 
these  came  in  ever-increasing  numbers,  thirty  in  the  six  years 
between  1888  and  1894,  thirteen  of  them  at  their  own  charges. 
The  mission  received  a  new  impulse  from  the  coming  of  these 
ladies.  They  established  day-schools  and  boarding-schools 
for  girls,  were  indefatigable  in  visiting  the  homes  of  the  people 
in  town  and  country,  and  endeavoured  in  every  conceivable 
way  to  gather  round  themselves  groups  of  neglected  women 
and  girls.  Sometimes  the  women  were  astonished  at  their 
procedure.  "  What  do  you  want  to  teach  us  ? "  asked  one 
Moslem  woman.  "  We  are  after  all  only  goats  and  asses." 
And  visiting  from  house  to  house  is  indeed  trying  enough 
work. 

"  Picture  to  yourself  a  courtyard,  which  is  entered  by  a 
shattered  door,  and,  round  this  court,  perhaps  from  five  to 
seven  houses.  A  native  house  means  merely  one  big,  window- 
less  room,  and  living  in  it  the  father  and  mother  and  one  or 
two  generations  following.  In  the  summer  time  the  women, 
when  not  engaged  in  the  fields  or  vineyards,  congregate  to- 
gether in  a  courtyard  to  do  their  daily  household  work,  such 
as  sifting  the  corn,  cleaning  the  grain,  basket  work,  cooking, 
mending  their  one  garment,  combing  their  hair,  and  so  forth. 
A  Felahat  (village  woman)  rarely  sits  idle,  but,  true  to  her 
Eastern  nature,  all  her  work  is  done  in  a  leisurely  fashion. 
Into  this  court  the  missionary  enters,  Bible  in  hand,  ready  to 
speak  to  any  one  she  may  find,  and  as  she  enters  her  eye  gladly 
and  quickly  sees  a  little  group  of  women  sitting  quietly  to- 
gether in  the  centre  of  the  court,  and  she  is  apt  to  think 
what  an  especially  good  opportunity  has  fallen  to  her  ;  but 
after  she  has  been  speaking  a  few  minutes,  and  the  women 
seem  to  be  listening,  and  she  is  anxious  to  drive  the  lesson 


Syria  and  Palestine  251 

home,  suddenly  the  quiet  and  attention  are  broken  by  the 
shrill  scream  of  a  cock,  repeated  and  repeated,  and  the  hens, 
not  behindhand,  begin  to  cackle,  and  all  the  little  chickens  fly 
first  over  one,  then  over  another.  Then  the  dogs  start  bark- 
ing, for  some  Gipsy  or  other  has  come  to  beg  a  piece  of  bread, 
or  a  neighbour  wants  to  buy  some  eggs,  or  to  borrow  a  sieve 
or  spoon.  And  then  the  donkeys  who  up  to  now  have  stood 
quietly  tied  in  the  court,  begin  to  bray  alternately,  or  some 
horse  neighs,  and,  as  the  afternoon  wears  on,  the  husbands  and 
the  elder  boys  return  from  the  fields,  bringing  with  them  herds 
of  goats  and  sheep  and  oxen,  and  the  whole  little  company 
must  get  up  in  order  to  make  room  for  them  to  enter  the  one- 
roomed  dwelling,  where  a  place  is  provided  for  them  beneath 
the  dwelling-room  of  the  family  above.  By  the  time  we  settle 
down  again,  the  thread  is  broken,  and  the  children  must  needs 
cry,  and  the  women  have  only  a  scattered  recollection  of  what 
has  been  said"  {Proceedings,  1897,  p.  1Y8).  Female  education 
is,  however,  undergoing  a  slow  but  steady  change  for  the  bet- 
ter. The  people  are  sending  their  girls  to  learn  to  read,  write 
and  do  needlework.  In  former  days  they  said  it  was  not  a 
good  thing  for  girls  to  learn  to  read,  for  then  they  would  be 
able  to  read  the  men's  secrets  ;  that  arithmetic  was  not  needed 
by  them,  as  they  would  never  have  to  keep  shop ;  and  that 
they  did  not  require  to  know  any  geography,  because  they 
would  never  travel. 

Of  still  greater  importance,  perhaps,  has  been  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  medical  mission  work,  which  has  been  carried  on 
with  great  zeal  since  1881.  The  native  doctors  are  as  incom- 
petent as  elsewhere  in  the  Near  East.  Copious  bleeding,  ac- 
complished by  biting  with  the  teeth,  if  there  is  no  knife  at 
hand,  burning  with  a  red-hot  piece  of  iron  and  other  such 
drastic  measures  are  their  favourite  treatment.  At  first,  how- 
ever, people  distrusted  the  simple  medicines  of  the  mission- 
aries. To  make  sure  that  they  were  not  poisonous,  they 
generally  tried  the  effect  of  a  dose  on  a  dog.  Or  a  blind  man 
would,  before  an  operation  on  the  eye,  solemnly  curse  the  cross 
to  ward  off  sorcery.     Yet  the  calm,  patient,  self-denying  work 


2^2     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

of  the  missionary  triumphed  at  length  over  all  such  prejudices. 
The  medical  mission  made  its  way.  A  single  hospital  had,  in 
one  year,  1,200  in-patients  and  30,000  out-patients.  In  the 
consulting  room,  in  the  wards,  or  standing  in  the  open  with  his 
medicine  chest  beside  him,  while  on  his  tours,  the  medical  mis- 
sionary found  suitable  opportunities  for  scattering  the  seed  of 
life  in  receptive  and  willing  hearts.  On  such  occasions  even 
fanatical  Moslems  will  listen  to  much,  which,  if  spoken  in  any 
other  place,  or  by  any  other  person,  would  fill  them  with  rage- 

The  largest  mission  hospital  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
is  in  Nablus,  the  ancient  Shechem,  which  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
one  of  the  most  fanatical  Muhammadan  towns.  It  was  there 
that  the  fanatical  mob  was  on  the  point  of  storming  the  mis- 
sion settlement  in  1895.  But  it  is  just  this  fanaticism  that  the 
kindness  of  the  medical  missionary  is  able  to  overcome.  In 
1901  a  fine  new  hospital  was  opened,  which  has  since  been  en- 
larged so  that  it  has  sixty  beds.  This  institution  has  had  a 
very  quieting  influence.  Gaza  is  a  scarcely  less  fanatical  town. 
Here  for  many  years  Canon  Sterling,  who  is  also  a  physician, 
made  use  of  a  stuffy  house  of  native  pattern  as  a  hospital. 
But  in  1907  a  new  hospital,  with  all  the  modern  appliances, 
was  opened  there,  with  a  medical  missionary  at  its  head. 
Also  in  Es-Salt  and  in  Acca  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
has  stationed  medical  missionaries,  but  as  yet  native  houses 
have  to  serve  as  hospitals.  In  Kerak,  too,  many  patients  have 
been  treated  by  means  of  dispensaries. 

The  educational  work  has  not  kept  step  with  the  medical 
mission.  Since  Bishop  Gobat's  time  there  has  been  keen 
competition  on  the  part  of  the  Turkish  government,  and  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  Churches.  This  limits  the  need  as  well 
as  the  possibility  of  opening  Church  Missionary  Society 
schools.  The  original  "  Bishop  Gobat's  School  "  in  Jerusalem 
developed  into  a  boarding-school  for  boys,  a  college  (1905), 
and  a  "  Preparandi  Institute,"  to  which  was  attached  a 
divinity  school  for  candidates  for  ordination.  Latterly  the 
institute  has  been  closed.  A  boarding-school  for  girls  was 
opened  in  1892,  and,  in  1902,  was  combined  with  the  girls* 


Syria  and  Palestine  253 

boarding-school  which  was  taken  over  from  the  Female 
Education  Society,  the  entire  institution  being  removed  to 
Bethlehem.  Many  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  stations 
have  also  boys'  and  girls'  schools  ;  in  all  fifty-four  schools, 
attended  by  about  3,000  pupils.  There  are  also  some  small 
boarding-schools  and  orphanages. 

It  has  been  of  great  advantage  to  the  work  of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  in  the  last  twenty  years  that  the  staff  of 
missionaries  has  been  greatly  strengthened.  Until  1880  it 
had  consisted  merely  of  German  missionaries,  with  one  or 
two  Englishmen  at  their  head.  Now  there  are  working  in 
Palestine  fourteen  missionaries,  five  of  whom  are  medical 
missionaries,  and  thirty-one  lady  missionaries. 

The  Church  Missionary  Society  has  at  present  seven  main 
stations  and  a  large  number  of  permanent  or  temporary  out- 
stations,  which  are  for  the  most  part  served  by  lady  mis- 
sionaries. The  members  of  the  congregations  number  2,323, 
having  doubled  since  Bishop  Gobat's  death  in  1879.  Most  of 
these  are  from  the  Greek  Church.  It  cannot  be  said  how 
many  of  them  are  converted  Muhammadans. 

In  1905,  the  Church  Missionary  Society  organized  the 
native  congregations  according  to  its  "Church  Council 
System"  of  church  organization.  Since  there  is  such  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  church-members  in  Palestine  to 
make  large  demands  on  the  mission,  it  will  be  particularly 
difficult  here  to  educate  the  people  in  the  matter  of  auton- 
omy, and  especially  in  the  matter  of  self-support. 

The  Church  Missionary  Society  is  the  foremost  society 
in  Palestine  in  mission  work  among  Muhammadans,  both  in 
the  extent  of  the  work,  and  in  the  thoroughness  of  its  organ- 
ization. It  may,  therefore,  justly  claim  the  right  to  be  heard, 
especially  when  a  man  like  the  Rev.  T.  F.  Wolters,  who  has 
served  in  Palestine  for  thirty  years,  pronounces  judgment. 
"  It  is  true  that  the  medical  missionaries  are  breaking  down 
the  fence  of  social  separation  between  Muhammadans  and 
Christians  and  that  medical  men  and  nurses  have  precious  op- 
portunities of  pressing  the  claims  of  Christ  upon  Moslems  of 


254     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

all  classes,  and  of  establishing  bonds  of  friendship,  more  or 
less  sincere,  with  their  patients.  But  all  this  is  as  yet  strictly 
confined  to  '  medical  work,'  An  ordained  missionary, 
whether  European  or  native,  soon  finds  that  his  efforts  to 
reach  the  people  are  limited  by  barriers  which  have  not  been 
broken  down.  A  catechist,  employed  to  follow  up  cases  that 
have  been  in  the  hospital  by  visits  to  the  villages  from  which 
these  cases  come,  has  often  told  me  how  exceedingly  limited 
even  his  work  is.  An  occasional  visit  may  be  satisfactory, 
but,  as  soon  as  it  is  repeated,  say  once  a  month,  the  people 
retire  and  will  have  nothing  to  say  to  their  visitor.  Whether 
the  '  day  of  visitation '  for  the  Moslem  has  come  or  not,  the 
hard  fact,  as  far  as  my  observation  and  experience  lead 
me  to  judge,  is  that  the  Moslem  is  still  very  far  from  being 
accessible  to  direct  effort,  except  when  he  is  under  medical 
care  "  {ProoeedingSj  1905,  p.  146). 

Kev.  C.  T.  Wilson  gives  a  slightly  more  optimistic  report. 
He  says : — "  As  to  the  work  among  the  Muhammadans,  it 
would  seem  as  if  the  day  of  grace  were  about  to  break.  Our 
medical  missions  remove  prejudices,  overcome  opposition,  and 
open  a  way  to  many  hearts  that  have  been  hitherto  closed  to 
the  truth.  There  is,  therefore,  no  lack  of  blessing  or  encour- 
agement. But  the  red  of  dawn  must  not  be  mistaken  for  the 
full  light  of  day.  Our  experiences  can  again  point  to  the 
fact  that,  before  the  day  can  come,  many  social  and  political 
limitations  have  to  be  removed  which  hinder  Moslems  from 
making  an  open  confession  of  faith.  How  and  when  this  will 
come  to  pass,  no  one  can  say.  It  may  cost  hot  conflict,  it 
may  happen  overnight.  Who  knows?  Grateful  for  the 
dawn,  we  are  waiting  patiently  until  God  reveals  His  pur- 
poses of  grace."  It  must  be  added  that  Palestine  is  the  most 
stony  ground  which  missions  among  Muhammadans  are 
trying  to  cultivate,  because  religious  rancour,  encouraged  as  it 
is  by  the  suspicious  policy  of  the  Turkish  authorities,  is  so 
deeply  rooted  there. 

We  may  here  refer  to  the  work  done  in  Palestine  by  various 
English,  Scottish  and  American  societies.     First,  we  must  com- 


Syria  and  Palestine  255 

plete  the  history  of  the  London  Jewish  Society.  In  this  mission 
occurred  a  romantic  but  disturbing  episode  when  the  con- 
vert Z.  H.  Friedlaender  (1873-1886),  in  connection  with  the 
immigration  of  Jews  from  Roumania,  which  was  strong  at 
that  time,  pursued  national  Jewish  schemes,  in  this  way  en- 
deavouring to  gain  Jews  in  great  numbers.  At  that  time 
(1883)  the  "  Jewish  Refugees'  Aid  Society  "  was  founded  in 
England.  This  society  had  considerable  sums  at  its  disposal, 
with  which  it  liberally  supported  Jews  emigrating  to  Pales- 
tine, establishing  an  agricultural  colony  in  Artuf,  which  lies 
midway  between  Jerusalem  and  Jaffa.  When,  later  on,  still 
greater  contributions  were  coming  in  from  rich  Jews,  most  of 
Friedlaender's  adherents  left  him,  and  he  himself  had  to  be 
dismissed  from  the  service  of  the  mission  on  account  of  cer- 
tain irregularities.  Jerusalem  is  the  only  station  of  the 
mission  that  has  a  comparatively  large  number  of  converts. 
In  1886  there  were  217  Protestant  Christians,  who  had  been 
born  Jews.  In  eight  years  692  people  were  baptized.  At 
present  there  are  only  about  seventy  members  in  the  congre- 
gation, since  very  few  of  the  converts  can  earn  a  living  in 
Jerusalem  after  they  have  been  baptized,  and  most  of  them 
are,  therefore,  compelled  to  leave  the  city  in  order  to  find  em- 
ployment. Extensive  missionary  work  is  being  done  here. 
First,  there  is  the  large  mission  hospital.  Founded  in  1872, 
especially  for  the  benefit  of  the  Jewish  population  of  the 
city,  it  was  conducted  for  half  a  century  mainly  as  a  philan- 
thropic institution,  without  any  great  accentuation  of  its  mis- 
sionary character.  In  1897,  a  new  hospital  was  built  on  the 
Heights  of  Godfrey  in  the  suburbs,  consisting  of  three  main 
buildings  and  three  isolated  wards.  Two  English  doctors 
form  the  medical  staff.  About  one  thousand  Jews  are  re- 
ceived as  in-patients  every  year,  and  their  religious  scruples 
regarding  food  and  customs  are  considered.  There  are  also  an 
Industrial  Home,  in  which  candidates  for  baptism  are  em- 
ployed during  a  period  of  probation  and  strengthening  of 
their  faith ;  a  boys'  and  a  girls'  school  for  both  boarders  and 
day-scholars ;  refuges  for  male  and  female  enquirers ;  and  a 


256     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

bookstore  near  Christ  Church,  which  is  the  centre  of  the 
whole  system.  Thus  Jerusalem  is  one  of  the  best-equipped 
stations  of  the  Jewish  mission  in  the  world.  The  same 
society  has  stations  at  Jaffa  and  Safed.  In  Jaffa,  which  was 
temporarily  occupied  in  1845  before  it  was  made  a  permanent 
station  in  1882,  there  is  but  a  small  congregation,  provided 
with  a  church.  But  in  Safed  there  is  a  hospital  with  a 
dispensary,  a  girls'  school,  a  night-school  for  boys  and  for 
girls,  and  a  bookstore. 

In  addition  to  this  society  for  promoting  Christianity 
among  the  Jews,  special  mention  must  be  made  of  the  United 
Free  Church  of  Scotland,  which  is  working  among  the  Jews 
of  Palestine.  In  1884,  the  mission  of  this  Church  occupied 
Tiberias,  a  town  full  of  filth,  yet  held  sacred  by  the  Jews, 
where  Dr.  Torrance  still  continues  his  labours  with  much 
patience.  "Within  the  last  few  years  he  has  built  a  new  and 
roomy  mission  hospital  on  a  fine  site  overlooking  the  Sea  of 
Galilee.  The  society  has  also  schools  for  Jews  in  Safed, 
which  are  managed  by  the  missionaries  in  Tiberias.  A  still 
more  important  point  has  been  gained  by  the  occupation  of 
the  fanatical  town  of  Hebron.  Here  Dr.  Patterson,  a 
medical  missionary,  is  stationed,  and  holds  his  own  in  spite  of 
all  opposition.  He  has  established  a  dispensary,  which  is 
much  visited,  and  a  temporary  hospital  with  ten  beds,  which 
it  is  hoped  will  soon  be  followed  by  a  larger  and  more  suit- 
able building.  A  few  Mildmay  deaconesses  also  worked  for 
a  time  among  the  Jews  in  Hebron,  opening  a  dispensary. 
Altogether  there  are  only  slightly  more  than  one  hundred 
and  fifty  baptized  Jews  in  the  Holy  Land ;  these  form,  how- 
ever, but  a  small  portion  of  the  Jews  that  have  become 
Protestants,  for  very  many  more  have  emigrated  to  escape 
persecution. 

"Working  among  the  Oriental  Christian  population  there  are 
also  a  number  of  small  societies,  which  cannot  become  really 
effective  on  account  of  their  isolation.  "We  name  such  as  are 
known  to  us  in  geographical  order.  In  Judea  there  is  the 
private  work   of   the  Anglican  Bishop  Blyth  in  Jerusalem, 


Syria  and  Palestine  257 

where  he  has  built,  outside  the  Damascus  gate,  a  number  of 
houses  with  a  highly  ornamented  church.  There  he  himself 
resides  and  maintains  large  boarding-  and  day-schools  for  boys 
and  girls,  in  which  also  higher  education  is  imparted.  His 
teaching  staff  consists  of  seven  Europeans  and  twelve  natives. 
Of  course  no  proselytizing  is  permitted  among  the  Greek 
Orthodox  children.  The  schools  are  very  popular,  particularly 
because  English  is  well  taught  in  them. 

Further,  the  English  Order  of  St.  John  has  an  ophthalmic 
hospital  in  Jerusalem.  Agents  of  the  American  Christian 
and  Missionary  Alliance  have  also  been  working  there  since 
1894 ;  at  first  there  were  some  American  lady  missionaries, 
an  ordained  missionary,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Thompson,  coming 
later.  They  have  a  small  chapel  in  Jerusalem,  in  which 
regular  services  are  held,  also  schools  in  Jerusalem,  Hebron, 
Ain  Karim  and  Jaffa.  Eamallab,  about  ten  miles  from 
Jerusalem,  where  the  Church  Missionary  Society  has  a  con- 
siderable congregation  and  a  well-manned  out-station,  is  the 
centre  of  the  work  of  the  American  Friends  (since  1876),  who 
have  a  boarding-school  for  boys  and  one  for  girls,  and  a  small 
congregation  of  about  seventy  souls,  as  well  as  schools  in  the 
neighbouring  villages  of  Ain  Arik,  Jifna  and  et  Tayyibeh. 

In  1863,  Miss  Walker  Arnott,  of  the  so-called  "Tabitha 
Mission,"  founded  a  girls'  school  in  Jaffa.  The  school  build- 
ing is  a  massive  structure,  and  the  school  is  attended  by  185 
girls.     Evangelistic  work  is  also  carried  on. 

The  Jaffa  Medical  Mission  was  begun  in  Jaffa  in  1878  by 
an  English  lady.  Miss  Morgan.  A  hospital  was  built  in 
1882.  This  work  was  continued  by  Miss  Newton,  chiefly  at 
her  own  cost.  The  hospital  has  fifty  beds,  an  English  doctor 
being  at  the  head  of  it.  In  Lydda,  close  by,  there  is  a  branch 
dispensary.  Miss  Newton  died  in  the  autumn  of  1908,  leav- 
ing the  hospital  and  its  equipment  to  the  Church  Missionary 
Society,  which  now  carries  on  the  work  there. 

In  the  centre  of  the  country,  in  fanatical  ISTablus,  the  Eng- 
lish Baptists  have  gathered  a  congregation  of  129  members 
under  a  native  preacher.     In  Haifa  Bishop  Blyth  has  a  well- 


258     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

equipped  station ;  there  is  a  church,  built  by  the  Society  for 
the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  with  an  English  and  an  Arab 
clergyman,  a  hospital  with  one  doctor  and  twenty-two  beds, 
schools  for  boys  and  for  girls,  and  a  lady  missionary,  who 
works  especially  among  Jews.  There  does  not  seem  to  be 
any  native  congregation.  In  Nazareth,  the  Armenian,  Dr. 
Yartan,  began  work  under  the  Edinburgh  Medical  Missionary 
Society  in  1866.  He  and  his  wife  cared  for  the  sick,  in 
quarters  that  were  very  confined  and  quite  unsuitable,  being 
simply  rented  native  dwellings.  He  also  travelled  much 
about  the  country  with  his  case  of  medicines.  He  died  on 
the  3d  of  December,  1908. 

The  first  attempt  to  build  a  hospital  on  European  lines  was 
defeated  by  the  machinations  of  the  Turkish  authorities,  but 
recently  Dr.  Scrimgeour,  a  Scottish  medical  missionary,  went 
to  Nazareth,  and  a  stately  modern  hospital  has  been  erected. 
The  Board  of  Directors  of  the  Syrian  Protestant  Orphanage 
has  built  a  branch  orphanage  on  a  good  site  on  a  hill  outside 
Nazareth  (1908). 

In  addition  to  all  this  we  read  now  and  then,  in  mission 
reports,  of  smaller  undertakings,  which  are  presumably  of  only 
a  transitory  nature ;  of  a  Jewish  mission,  "  Ammiel,"  in  Haifa, 
which  strives  to  gain  Jews  by  accommodating  itself  as  far  as 
possible  to  their  customs ;  of  the  efforts  of  the  Sabbatists  to 
propagate  their  peculiar  views  by  means  of  hydropathic 
establishments ;  and  of  various  independent  missionaries,  both 
men  and  women. 

3.     GermoM  Missionary  Work  in  the  Holy  Land  ^ 

It  was  not  only  English  friends  that  Bishop  Gobat  invited 
to  work  in  this  hard,  stony  ground  ;  he  also  expected  German 

^  "  Geschichte  der  Deutschen  evangelischen  Kirche  und  Mission  im  Heiligen 
Laude,"  Guetersloh,  1898,  Pflanz,  "  Verlassen,  nicht  vergessen.  Das  Heilige 
Land  und  die  evangelische  Liebesarbeit, "  Neuruppeu,  1903.  Periodicals:  the 
Jerusalem  Union,  Neuste  Nachrichten  aus  dem  Morgenlande,  Evangelische  Blaetter 
aus  Bethlehem ;  the  Syrian  Orphanage,  Bote  aus  Zion ;  the  Kaiserswerth  Deacon- 
esaea'  Homes,  Dank  und  Denk^afiter, 


Syria  and  Palestine  259 

Protestants  to  help.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  greatness  of  Gobat's 
character  that  he  liked  to  have  others  working  at  his  side, 
even  though  their  methods  did  not  always  please  him.  And 
in  Germany,  too,  there  was  a  joyful  response  to  his  invita- 
tion, for  evangelical  Christians  here  also  were  strongly  at- 
tracted by  the  sacred  memories  attaching  to  the  Holy  Land. 

{a)  The  Jerusalem  Union.  In  1844  and  1845  Dr.  F.  A. 
Strauss,  a  young  curate,  who  was  afterwards  to  be  an  influen- 
tial court  chaplain,  undertook  a  tour  through  the  Holy  Land, 
and,  on  his  return,  while  the  impressions  he  had  received  were 
still  vivid,  wrote  his  much-read  "  Sinai  und  Golgatha."  After 
that  he  was  untiring  in  his  endeavours  to  interest  the  Prussian 
State  Church  in  German  Protestant  missionary  undertakings 
in  the  Holy  Land.  On  the  2d  of  December,  1853,  the  Jeru- 
salem Union  (Jerusalems-Verein)  was  founded  for  the  purpose 
of  supporting  Protestant  institutions  and  German  congrega- 
tions in  the  Near  East.  This  Union  grew  slowly  ;  even  after 
five  years  its  income  did  not  exceed  £200.  But  after  the 
number  of  German  travellers  to  the  East  had  increased,  and 
particularly  after  the  German  Emperor's  visit  in  1898,  the 
Union  took  a  new  lease  of  life  and  has  now  an  income  of 
£7,000  at  its  disposal.  Bishop  Gobat  liked  to  make  use  of 
this  Union  for  the  carrying  out  of  his  plans,  and,  in  1860, 
handed  over  to  its  care  the  congregation  at  Bethlehem,  into 
which  he  had  gathered  converted  Greeks.  When,  in  1887  and 
1888,  Pastor  Ludwig  Schneller,  a  son  of  the  founder  of  the 
Syrian  Orphanage,  known  far  and  Avide  in  Germany  by  his 
interesting  books  on  Bible  lands,  became  the  minister  of  this 
Bethlehem  congregation,  he  set  about  collecting  £1,500  in 
Germany  for  the  building  of  a  church  in  the  town  of  the  na- 
tivity. With  this  money  in  hand  he  began,  in  1887,  to  build 
an  exceedingly  attractive  church,  which  he  called  the  "  Christ- 
mas Church."  As  was  usual,  especially  in  the  case  of  new 
churches,  the  Turkish  authorities  caused  needless  delay,  so 
that  the  church  could  not  be  consecrated  before  the  6th  of 
November,  1893,  and  even  then  only  because  the  German  Em- 
press had  personally  urged  the  Sultan  to  issue  the  necessary 


26o     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

firman.  The  Protestant  congregation  in  Bethlehem  now  num- 
bers one  hundred  and  fifty  baptized  members.  In  18T9  a 
second  Protestant  Arab  congregation  was  formed  in  the  large 
and  almost  entirely  Christian  village  of  Beit  Jala,  close  to 
Bethlehem,  which  has  also,  in  the[main,  had  a  pleasing  growth, 
and  now  numbers  one  hundred  and  forty  baptized  members. 
In  1884  the  Union  endeavoured  to  extend  its  work  to  the 
fanatical  town  of  Hebron,  where  there  is  a  small,  but  influen- 
tial congregation  of  Greek  Christians.  Here  the  Union  met 
with  fierce  opposition,  and  has  only  a  very  limited  work,  car- 
ried on  by  a  native  catechist.  When,  in  1895  and  1896,  the 
Armenians  were  suffering  the  fearful  massacres,  the  Union  was 
ready  to  reach  a  helping  hand,  and  established  in  1898,  near 
Bethlehem,  an  "  Armenian  Orphanage,"  into  which  they  re- 
ceived fifty  of  the  unfortunate  children.  The  house  was 
solidly  built,  since  it  was  to  be'permanently  used  as  a  training- 
school,  in  which  boys  belonging  to  Oriental  and  Protestant 
Churches  might  receive  a  free  education  of  a  simple  but 
thorough  character.  Inasmuch  as  the  Turkish  government 
subsequently  prohibited  the  introduction  of  Armenian  children 
into  Palestine,  it  is  chiefly  children  of  natives  of  Palestine  and 
Syria  who  are  received  into  this  institution.  In  1899  twenty- 
four  families  living  in  Beit  Sahur,  near  the  so-called  "  Shep- 
herds' field,"  left  the  Greek  for  the  Protestant  Church,  and 
were  taken  under  the  spiritual  care  of  the  Jerusalem  Union. 
Here  a  building  for  a  boys'  and  a  girls'  school,  with  quarters  for 
the  teachers,  is  being  erected.  As  so  often  happens  in  the 
Near  East,  the  converts,  feeling  themselves  disappointed  in 
their  unreasonable  expectations,  first  quarrelled,  and  then  for 
the  most  part  fell  away. 

Encouraged  thereto  by  Bishop  Scheele,  Swedish  friends  of 
the  Holy  Land  sent  a  doctor  to  Bethlehem  in  1904,  who  soon 
had  many  applications  from  sick  people  of  all  confessions,  so 
that  there  is  prospect  of  a  hospital's  being  built. 

Thus,  amid  many  difficulties  and  disappointments,  the  work 
of  the  Jerusalem  Union  in  and  around  Bethlehem  has  grown. 
At  present  there  are  about  three  hundred  and  forty  Arab 


Syria  and  Palestine  261 

Protestants  under  its  care.  But  the  last  few  years  have  been 
particularly  full  of  difficulties.  On  the  23d  of  July,  1903,  the 
able  leader  of  the  work,  Pastor  Immanuel  Bottcher,  was 
drowned  while  on  a  tour  in  Moab.  It  was  only  after  a  long 
interval  that  a  successor  could  be  sent  out. 

Meanwhile  violent  dissensions  broke  out  in  the  small  con- 
gregation. This  was  partly  the  result  of  bitter  feuds  between 
influential  families,  but  to  a  greater  extent  it  was  caused  by 
the  dissatisfaction  of  the  members,  most  of  whom  were  poor, 
with  the  behaviour  of  the  mission  board  at  home,  from  which 
they  thought  they  did  not  receive  sufficient  support.  It  is  a 
fact  that  Christians  of  all  confessions  in  Palestine  have  been 
spoiled  by  the  competition  among  foreign  governments  and 
Churches  in  the  effort  to  win  them,  so  that  all  benefits 
bestowed  are  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course.  And,  if  one 
congregation  is  thought  to  be  treated  more  generously,  the 
others  at  once  become  jealous. 

The  Jerusalem  Union  has  another  work,  in  addition  to  this 
trying  labour  among  the  Protestant  Arab  congregations. 
Several  families  of  templars  in  Jaffa  and  Haifa,  desiring  to 
return  to  the  Prussian  State  Church,  have  sought  to  enter 
into  connection  with  it  through  the  agency  of  the  Union. 
German  immigrants  arrived,  also,  who  required  to  be  cared 
for  spiritually.  So  it  came  about  that  a  German  Protestant 
congregation  was  established  in  Haifa  in  1882,  and  a  similar 
congregation  in  Jaffa  in  1892.  Since  then  each  has  been 
placed  on  an  independent  footing,  having  its  own  minister, 
church,  school,  teachers  and  deaconesses.  The  congregation 
in  Haifa  numbers  178,  and  that  in  Jaffa  121  German  mem- 
bers. 

(b)  The  Syrian  Orphanage.  In  Basle  Bishop  Gobat  had 
formed  a  friendship  with  Father  Spittler,  the  founder  of  the 
St.  Chrischona  Mission  near  that  city.  One  of  Spittler's 
favourite  projects  was  the  establishment  of  a  brotherhood  in 
Jerusalem,  "  in  the  way  the  Moravians  are  accustomed  to  be- 
gin their  missions,  in  order  that  the  poorer  people  there  may 
have    a   living  example  of    how  Christians  live  with  one 


262     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

another,  praying  and  working,  showing  love  to  their  neigh- 
bours and  seeliing  to  help  them  in  word  and  deed."  His 
agents  were  to  live  as  workmen,  not  as  missionaries,  and  to 
earn  their  bread  by  the  work  of  their  own  hands.  This 
brotherhood  was  established  in  Jerusalem  in  1846.  Later  it 
was  brought  into  connection  with  the  grand  plan  of  the 
"  apostles'  road "  to  Abyssinia.  For  this  road  Jerusalem 
was  to  be  the  point  of  departure.  This  plan  was  never  fully 
carried  into  execution  (cf.  Chap.  YI,  B,  2);  in  fact,  after 
Spittler's  death  in  186Y,  it  was  altogether  abandoned.  Yet 
the  brotherhood  has  been  the  means  of  bringing  many  able 
men  to  Palestine.  Among  the  first  missionaries  whom  Spittler 
sent  in  1846,  was  Palmer,  who  later  became  principal  of 
Bishop  Gobat's  Diocesan  School  in  Jerusalem,  where  he  re- 
mained until  1889.  Then  there  was  Baurat  Schick,  well 
known  to  all  visitors  in  Jerusalem  as  an  archaeologist ;  he  died 
in  December,  1901.  And,  in  1854,  Father  Ludwig  Schneller 
was  sent  to  Jerusalem.  Ludwig  Schneller  ^  was  born  on  the 
15th  of  January,  1820,  in  Erpfingen,  situated  in  the  Swabian 
Alb  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  celebrated  castle  of  Lich ten- 
stein.  His  parents  were  poor  peasants.  They  had  no 
thought  of  his  becoming  anything  but  a  peasant  like  them- 
selves, and  they  therefore  set  him  to  work  at  an  early  age  in 
field  and  stable.  But  in  this  peasant  family  there  lived 
the  memory  of  grandparents  who,  in  1734,  had,  with  other 
Salzburg  emigrants,  left  their  home  in  the  Salzach  valley, 
facing  poverty  for  conscience'  sake.  The  memory  awakened 
in  the  heart  of  the  boy  a  desire  to  help  in  the  spreading  of 
the  evangelical  faith,  instead  of  devoting  his  life  to  the  stony 
ground  of  the  Swabian  Alb.  But  how  to  set  about  it  ?  His 
parents  could  not  afiford  to  send  him  to  the  higher  schools. 
Yet  even  at  that  age  he  showed  the  persistency  of  purpose 
which  characterized  him  in  later  years.  He  spent  every 
available  moment  with  his  books.  The  village  minister, 
recognizing  the  ability  of  the  lad,  gave  him  private  lessons  in 

*  Schneller,   "  Vater  Schneller,  ein  Patriarch  der  evangelischen  Mission  im 
Heiligen  Lande,"  Leipsio,  1898. 


Syria  and  Palestine  263 

Latin,  Scripture  and  history,  the  school-teacher  helping  also 
in  other  branches  of  learning. 

At  an  early  age  he  went  in  for  the  "Wurttemberg  teachers' 
examination,  which  he  passed  with  distinction.  In  his 
twenty-seventh  year  he  was  called  by  Spittler  to  be  the  head 
teacher  and  manager  of  the  St.  Chrischona  Mission  House. 

In  1854,  Father  Spittler  appointed  him  to  superintend  the 
brotherhood  in  Jerusalem.  The  missionaries  who  were  to  be 
sent  to  Abyssinia  from  St.  Chrischona,  were  first  to  take  a 
practical  course  in  Jerusalem,  under  Schneller's  supervision. 

On  the  abandonment  of  the  "  apostles'  road,"  Schneller 
felt  impelled  to  begin  work  among  the  native  Arab  popula- 
tion of  Palestine.  There  was  plenty  of  work  waiting  for 
him.  Within  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  was  the  Church  Mission- 
ary Society  Mission,  but  outside  the  gates  of  the  city,  in  the 
heights  and  in  the  valleys  of  the  mountains  of  Judea,  the 
great  mass  of  the  native  population  lived,  and  it  had  not  been 
reached.  It  was  to  them  that  Schneller  decided  to  go.  So 
he  bought  a  high-lying  plot  of  ground  about  half  an  hour's 
walk  to  the  northwest  of  the  city,  intending  to  settle  there. 
The  carrying  out  of  his  plan  demanded  all  the  courage  of  his 
faith.  He  and  his  wife  lived  at  that  time  much  as  the 
Beduins  of  the  desert  live.  Where  to-day  one  sees  the  wide 
and  pleasant  gardens  of  the  Syrian  Orphanage,  there  was  at 
that  time  nothing  but  a  dreary  wilderness  of  rock.  Here 
they  lived  in  miserable  sheds  made  of  the  boughs  of  trees, 
dwellings  that  a  gust  of  wind  could  easily  overturn,  their 
next-door  neighbours  being  foxes  and  hares,  jackals  and 
hyenas,  which  often  mingled  their  howling  with  the  hymns 
the  Schnellers  were  singing.  In  addition  to  their  house,  they 
had  a  "dining-room"  and  a  "kitchen,"  both  likewise  huts. 
At  last,  before  the  rainy  season  set  in  with  its  hurricane 
winds  and  heavy  downpours,  a  few  rooms  were  got  ready  for 
habitation  in  a  solidly-built  house.  Soon,  however,  the 
Schnellers  were  to  be  unexpectedly  reminded  that  they  were 
exposed  to  the  attacks  of  predatory  neighbours.  As  Schneller 
was  returning  home  from  the  city  in  company  with  one  of 


264     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  missionaries,  his  companion  and  he  himself  were  beaten 
and  robbed,  being  even  stripped  of  their  clothing. 

But  in  the  following  spring  he  calmly  went  on  building 
his  house,  finishing  it  that  year.  On  the  night  in  which  he 
entered  his  new  home,  he  was  attacked  by  robbers.  The 
windows  were  smashed  in,  the  doors  broken  with  stones,  and 
seven  robbers  armed  with  swords  and  guns  burst  into  his 
room.  Schneller  was  bidden,  with  a  sword  at  his  breast,  to 
hold  a  light  till  they  had  taken  all  the  clothes  and  articles  of 
furniture.  Finding  little  money,  they  struck  him  several 
times  on  the  back  with  a  sword,  in  order  to  terrorize  him 
into  giving  them  more  money,  which  the  poor  man  did  not 
possess.  Schneller  lay  there  bleeding,  and  the  robbers  left  at 
last,  taking  with  them  plunder  amounting  to  some  9,000  pias- 
tres in  value.  Fortunately  one  of  the  robbers  could  be  recog- 
nized, and  he  was  sentenced  to  pay  compensation.  Hardly 
half  a  year  later,  in  the  night  preceding  the  day  on  which  the 
sum  was  to  be  paid,  the  robbers  came  again,  this  time  con- 
templating murder.  Schneller  was  compelled  to  shoot  at 
them,  for  he  had  a  wife  and  child  to  defend.  His  shooting 
had  the  desired  effect.  Surprised,  and  also  slightly  wounded, 
the  robbers  left  the  house.  Those  were  dark  days.  The 
Schnellers  had  to  leave  the  house  they  had  entered  in  such 
courageous  spirit,  and  take  refuge  within  the  walls  of  the  city. 

Ludwig  Schneller's  plans  took  a  new  and  decisive  turn  when 
thousands  of  widows  and  orphans  were  made  by  the  Syrian 
massacres  of  1860.  When,  at  that  time,  a  cry  of  pity  was 
sounding  throughout  Christian  Europe,  Schneller  hurried  into 
Syria,  and,  collecting  Maronite  orphans,  took  them  to  Jeru- 
salem, founding  there  the  Syrian  Orphanage  outside  the  city. 
Such  was  the  unpretentious  origin  of  what,  through  the  inde- 
fatigability  and  pedagogic  skill  of  its  founder,  was  to  become 
in  a  few  decades  the  most  important  Protestant  institution  in 
the  Holy  Land.  It  grew  only  slowly,  yet  surely,  like  a  tough- 
timbered  tree  in  stony  soil.  It  would  fatigue  the  reader  to 
be  told  in  detail  of  the  addition  of  house  after  house,  and  of 
department  after  department.     Suffice  it  to  say  that  Father 


Syria  and  Palesrine  265 

Schneller  himself  conducted  the  institution  in  patriarchal 
fashion  until  his  death  on  the  18th  of  October,  1896,  and  that 
the  work  has  since  been  continued  by  his  son,  the  Rev.  Theo- 
dor  Schneller,  in  the  same  spirit.  Those  first  Maronite  or- 
phans left  the  orphanage  of  course,  in  about  ten  years,  making 
room  for  a  greater  and  greater  number  of  poor  boys  from 
Palestine,  Syria  and  neighbouring  countries.  To-day,  count- 
ing teachers  and  overseers,  the  orphanage  harbours  more  than 
five  hundred  people,  thus  forming  a  respectable  settlement  by 
itself. 

Ludwig  Schneller's  main  object  was  to  give  the  children, 
most  of  whom  were  bitterly  poor  and  destitute,  a  solid  educa- 
tion, calculated  to  fit  them  for  gaining  a  living.  Accordingly, 
in  addition  to  the  ordinary  subjects,  he  gave  them  a  practical 
technical  training  in  all  manner  of  handicrafts,  the  teaching 
being  done  by  skilled  artificers  from  Germany  ;  he  thus  opened 
workshops  for  tailoring,  boot-making,  carpentry  and  turning, 
particularly  in  olive  wood,  as  well  as  a  smithy.  His  printing 
establishment  is  still  the  best  in  Palestine,  and  he  began  a 
large  pottery  and  brick  business.  As  a  rule,  each  pupil  must 
learn  some  trade  in  addition  to  his  ordinary  school  tasks,  and 
is  properly  apprenticed  to  a  master,  after  his  confirmation. 
Since  not  all  the  boys  were  inclined  to  master  a  trade,  or 
adapted  to  such  work,  and  since  agriculture  is  the  chief  occu- 
pation of  the  Arab  population,  Schneller  rented  from  the 
Turkish  government  in  1890,  seven  hundred  acres  of  barren 
land,  which  was  cultivated  with  great  diligence  to  fit  it  for 
the  planting  of  orange  trees.  As  soon  as  permission  was 
granted  by  the  Turkish  authorities,  this  estate  was  bought 
(October  15,  1906),  and  on  it  a  colony  of  thirty  of  the  orphans 
was  settled.  There  is  a  great  demand  for  able  teachers  and 
preachers  in  all  of  the  Protestant  missions  of  the  Near  East. 
Schneller  was  in  the  fortunate  position  of  being  able  to  choose 
from  amongst  the  large  number  of  his  orphan  boys  those  who 
were  most  talented  and  suitable  for  such  service,  and  for  these 
he  founded  a  seminary  for  the  training  of  teachers  and  preach- 
ers.    A  large  bequest  of  the  late  Count  Muennich,  of  Saxony, 


266     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

provided  the  means  for  founding  and  maintaining  an  asylum 
for  twenty  blind  boys,  and  as  many  girls.  Here  the  children 
are,  as  in  Europe,  taught  basket-  and  chair-making,  brush- 
binding  and  other  occupations.  But  all  the  raw  material  has 
to  be  got  from  Germany,  as  none  of  it  is  produced  in  Pales- 
tine. The  disposal  of  the  work  turned  out  is  also  a  difficult 
matter.  Later,  girls  were  also  admitted  to  the  benefits  of  the 
orphanage,  yet  there  are  only  thirty-two  girls  to  two  hundred 
boys.  In  order  to  fit  the  girls  for  an  occupation  after  they 
leave  the  school,  a  needlework  room  and  a  steam  laundry 
were  opened. 

Resembling  a  wide-branching  tree  in  the  variety  of  its 
occupations,  the  Syrian  Orphanage  is  a  splendid  training- 
institution  for  the  Arab  youth  in  Palestine.  Yet  the  problem 
was  not  yet  solved,  what  the  object  of  such  training  should 
be.  "Would  it  be  sufficient  to  instruct  the  children  in  the 
truths  of  the  Gospel  by  means  of  the  daily  Bible  classes,  morn- 
ing and  evening  prayers  and  Sunday  services,  and  then  urge 
them,  after  their  six  or  ten  years'  stay  in  the  orphanage,  to 
return  to  their  original  Churches  ?  For  some  decades  this 
plan  was  tried,  but  it  was  the  general  experience  that  the 
evangelical  impressions  made  on  the  hearts  of  the  children 
were  soon  erased,  old  habits  and  surroundings  proving  too 
strong.  Nor  could  this  danger  be  guarded  against  by  means 
of  visits  made  by  the  leaders  of  the  institution,  or  by  exten- 
sive correspondence,  whereby  an  attempt  w^as  made  to  main- 
tain a  connection  with  former  pupils.  It  was  like  the  task  of 
Sisyphus ;  labour  was  lost  in  one  generation  after  the  other. 
A  change  of  plan  was  therefore  made ;  the  object  henceforth 
should  be  "to  work  towards  the  formation  of  a  national  Prot- 
estant Church  for  the  Arabs,"  and  to  this  end  the  pupils  must 
be  led  to  separate  themselves  definitely  from  their  original 
Churches,  and  to  join  the  Protestant  congregation.  Yet  in 
Palestine  there  were  great  difficulties  in  the  way  of  founding 
vigorous  Protestant  congregations.  Though  a  great  majority 
of  the  pupils  had  learned  handicrafts,  there  was  very  little 
prospect  of  their  being  able  to  earn  a  secure  livelihood  in 


Syria  and  Palestine  267 

Palestine,  owing  to  the  undeveloped  state  of  the  country,  and 
the  consequent  lack  of  demand  for  such  work.  Only  two 
ways  out  of  this  difficulty  seemed  to  be  open.  Either  upon 
leaving  the  school  they  must  emigrate  to  Egypt,  East  Africa, 
Europe,  or  America,  as  so  many  Oriental  Christians  were 
doing,  thus  becoming  scattered  over  the  whole  world  and  lost 
to  their  own  country,  or  they  must  be  provided  with  work  in 
connection  with  the  Syrian  Orphanage.  'Now  Father  Schneller 
had,  from  the  very  beginning,  methodically  bought  up  all 
the  ground  about  the  orphanage  that  he  could  lay  hands  on, 
thus  quietly  acquiring  for  the  orphanage  a  considerable  prop- 
erty which  was  fairly  compact,  and  was  steadily  rising  in 
value.  Upon  this  estate,  then,  pupils  leaving  the  orphanage 
were  settled,  forming  a  Protestant  community,  which,  in  the 
course  of  years,  numbered  one  hundred  and  forty  souls.  Some 
of  the  pupils  also  settled  in  Jerusalem,  and,  with  a  view  to 
caring  for  their  children,  and  at  the  same  time  to  gaining  a 
footing  amongst  the  inhabitants  of  the  city,  a  school  of  three 
classes  was  begun  there,  combined  with  a  kindergarten ;  both 
of  these  are  very  well  attended. 

After  Schneller's  death  an  Evangelical  Union  on  behalf  of 
the  Syrian  Orphanage  was  formed,  in  1896,  in  Germany,  with 
its  headquarters  in  Cologne,  whence  the  extensive  institutional 
scheme  was  directed.  The  Syrian  Orphanage  has  a  yearly 
budget  of  nearly  £9,000,  of  which  £7,500  are  collected  from 
individuals,  chiefly  as  Christmas  gifts. 

(c)  The  Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses''  Homes.  Previous  to  both 
the  Jerusalem  Union  and  the  Syrian  Orphanage,  the  Kaisers- 
werth Deaconesses'  Homes  were  at  work  in  Palestine.  In  1851 
Pastor  Theodor  Fliedner,  the  founder  of  this  organization,  ac- 
cepted the  cordial  invitation  of  Bishop  G-obat  to  come  to  Jerusa- 
lem, and,  with  four  of  his  deaconesses,  took  possession  of  a  simple 
house  on  Mount  Zion,  belonging  to  the  Prussian  crown.  From 
this  modest  beginning  there  has  grown  the  extensive  work  of 
the  German  deaconesses  with  its  two  main  branches.  At  first 
the  deaconesses  devoted  themselves  to  the  education  of  the 
women,  w^hom  they  found  to  be  in  a  very  neglected  condition. 


268     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

This  was  pioneer  work,  for,  until  that  time,  schools  for  girls 
were  unknown  in  Palestine.  They  founded  a  boarding- 
school  for  girls,  which  they  subsequently  removed  to  a  goodly 
building  called  "  Talitha  Cumi,"  situated  on  the  Heights  of 
Godfrey.  One  hundred  and  ten  girls  are  here  instructed  in 
the  Protestant  faith  and  the  usual  branches,  learning  also 
plain  needlework.  At  first  Muhammadan  girls  were  gladly 
received,  but  the  jealous  Turkish  authorities  sternly  pro- 
hibited this.  The  work  is  therefore,  of  necessity,  confined 
to  training  the  daughters  of  Protestants  and  Oriental  Chris- 
tians. If  it  is  difficult  for  the  Syrian  Orphanage  to  induce 
its  boys  to  join  the  Protestant  Church,  it  is,  of  course,  a 
still  more  difficult  task  with  the  girls,  especially  since,  accord- 
ing to  oriental  customs,  girls  are  married  (or  sold)  to  men 
chosen  by  their  fathers.  Nevertheless  in  the  last  few  years 
it  has  more  frequently  happened  that  girls  have  been  permitted 
by  their  relatives  to  join  the  Protestant  Church.  Some  of 
these  are  doing  good  work  as  deaconesses  or  teachers  in  the 
girls'  schools.  More  than  a  thousand  girls  have,  in  the  last 
fifty  years,  enjoyed  the  blessing  of  a  free  Protestant  education 
in  Talitha  Cumi. 

The  Syrian  Orphanage,  the  Talitha  Cumi  Institution  and 
the  Armenian  Orphanage  near  Bethlehem  are  the  three  most 
important  German  educational  institutions  in  Palestine ;  all 
three  are  boarding-schools,  and  charge  no  fees.  They  con- 
tribute richly  to  the  well-being  of  the  younger  generation  in 
Palestine.  Altogether,  four  hundred  native  boys  and  girls  re- 
ceive a  Protestant  education  in  these  schools.  It  is  character- 
istic and  appropriate  that  Germany,  the  land  of  schools,  should, 
in  her  missionary  work,  do  so  much  in  the  way  of  giving 
children  a  methodical  training.  It  is  true  that,  as  boarding- 
schools,  these  institutions  are  subject  to  a  limitation  of  their 
usefulness.  Their  quiet  and  patient  work  resembles  the  lay- 
ing of  the  hidden  foundation  of  a  bridge,  on  which  the  Gospel 
may  hold  a  triumphal  entry  into  the  land  whence  it  sprang. 

The  second  method  of  service  which  the  deaconesses  at 
once  adopted,  was  that  of  nursing.    In  their  first  small  house 


Syria  and  Palestine  269 

they  arranged  two  sick-rooms,  one  for  men  and  the  other  for 
women.  Soon  after,  they  built  a  separate  sanatorium  on 
Mount  Zion.  Here,  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  and  filth  of 
the  oriental  city,  they  built  a  hospital  with  one  hundred  beds. 
Patients  of  all  religions  and  tongues  were  admitted,  600  in- 
patients and  over  7,000  out-patients  being  annually  treated. 
But  the  unhealthful  situation  in  the  midst  of  the  city  proved 
to  be  unsuitable  for  a  hospital.  It  was  therefore  decided  to 
remove  to  the  open  and  airy  Heights  of  Godfrey  to  the  north- 
west of  the  city,  where  a  larger  building  was  erected.  A 
great  number  of  Muhammadan  patients  are  received. 

Two  other  German  institutions  may  be  mentioned,  which 
are,  as  it  were,  allies  of  the  Kaiserswerth  hospital  in  the  care 
of  the  sick.  When,  in  1872,  the  Grand-Duke  of  Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin  was  staying  in  Jerusalem,  he  undertook  to  pay  the 
cost  of  five  free  beds  in  Dr.  Sandrezky's  hospital  for  children, 
and  permitted  the  institution  to  be  called  the  "  Marienstift  " 
after  the  name  of  his  wife.  Dr.  Sandrezky  conducted  the  hos- 
pital until  his  death  in  1899,  enlarging  it  considerably.  An- 
nual subscriptions  were  sent  to  it  from  the  court  of  the  Grand- 
Duchy  of  Mecklenburg.  It  was  not  found  practicable  to  form 
a  managing  committee  in  Germany,  nor  was  it  possible  to 
erect  a  new  building  fulfilling  all  the  modern  requirements  of 
such  an  institution.  It  has  therefore  been  united  with  the 
Kaiserswerth  hospital. 

When  the  Pomeranian  Baron  von  Kefifenbrink-Ascheraden 
went  to  Palestine  with  his  wife  in  1865,  he  was  greatly 
moved  by  the  misery  of  the  four  hundred  lepers,  most  of 
whom  were  beggars  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  larger  towns. 
He  succeeded,  in  1867,  in  opening  a  home  for  them  outside  the 
Jaffa  gate,  which  he  called  "  Jesushilfe."  In  1881  it  passed 
into  the  possession  of  the  Moravian  Church,  under  the  man- 
agement of  which  it  had  been  from  the  very  beginning.  In 
1885  it  was  removed  to  a  large  vineyard  farther  away  from 
the  city.  This  work  demands  great  self-denial ;  in  addition  to 
the  fact  that  the  nursing  of  the  lepers  is  very  trying,  and  that 
there  is  always  danger  of  the  nurses'  being  infected  with  the 


270     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

disease,  there  is  the  bad  behaviour  of  these  mendicants  to  be 
reckoned  with,  as  well  as  their  ingratitude.  N"or  does  the 
Turkish  government  lend  any  adequate  assistance  in  the  mat- 
ter of  confining  lepers  in  asylums  in  order  to  prevent  the 
spread  of  the  disease,  and  it  is  so  jealous  that  it  does  not  per- 
mit Muhamraadan  inmates  to  attend  the  Christian  services. 
At  present  there  are  fifty  patients  in  the  institution,  thirty- 
seven  of  whom  are  Muhammadans.  German  medical  mission- 
ary work,  then,  includes  various  charitable  undertakings. 
Such  undertakings  are  to  be  regarded  as  real  missionary  work 
in  Palestine,  just  as  in  other  mission  fields.  They  are  quietly 
pulling  down  the  walls  of  prejudice  and  animosity,  which, 
erected  by  Oriental  Christians  and  Muhammadans  alike,  ob- 
struct the  progress  of  Protestant  missions. 

Ten  years  ago  the  Kaiserswerth  deaconesses  were  led  to  de- 
vote themselves  more  and  more  to  visiting  from  house  to 
house  among  the  Protestant  communities.  They  were  wel- 
comed both  in  Arab  and  German  congregations,  for  they  cared 
for  the  sick  and  the  poor,  organized  the  young  men  and  young 
women  into  Christian  societies,  established  kindergartens,  and 
taught  in  girls'  schools.  Deaconesses  are  thus  employed  in  Jeru- 
salem, Bethlehem,  Jaffa  and  Haifa.  In  their  modest  way  they 
are  helping  to  make  the  Protestant  congregations  under  Ger- 
man care  a  light  to  this  country,  so  torn  asunder  by  religious 
differences.  There  are,  altogether,  in  these  congregations  about 
2,700  Protestants,  690  of  whom  are  Arabs,  1,330  templars  and 
4:60  members  of  the  German  State  Church.  They  form  the 
larger  share  of  all  the  Protestants  in  Palestine,  for  in  the 
English  and  American  congregations  there  are  hardly  more 
than  2,600  native  and  foreign  members. 

Just  at  present,  under  the  special  patronage  of  the  German 
Emperor  and  Empress,  an  institution  is  being  established  on 
the  northern  slopes  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  known  as  the 
"  Kaiserin  Auguste  Victoria  Stiftung."  The  large  cluster  of 
houses  being  built  there,  at  a  cost  of  £100,000,  is  to  be  dedi- 
cated in  the  spring  of  1910,  and  is  to  be  a  centre  for  all  Ger- 
man charitable  work  in  Palestine. 


Syria  and  Palestine  271 

^.  Protestant  Outposts  in  Arabia 
(a)  The  "  Cradle  0/  Islain."  Arabia  is  five  times  the  size 
of  the  German  Empire,  but  has  only  5,000,000  inhabitants. 
From  ancient  times  there  have  been  centres  of  culture  on  its 
borders,  as  Sheba  in  the  far  southwest,  and  Petra  in  the  north, 
on  the  borders  of  the  Koman  Empire  ;  and  the  Sinaitic  Penin- 
sula was,  in  former  centuries,  a  religious  centre  both  for  Bed- 
uins  and  for  Christian  monks.  Yet  the  country,  with  its 
gifted  Arab  population,  lay  in  comparative  darkness  till  Mu- 
hammad came  to  raise  the  Arabs  to  historical  importance. 
History  tells  of  two  other  nations  which,  in  the  fresh  vigour 
of  their  youth,  were  awakened  out  of  sleep  by  magical  per- 
sonal influences,  to  become  splendid  conquerors  and  to  found 
great  empires  ;  the  Macedonians  under  Alexander  the  Great, 
and  the  Mongols  under  Genghis  Khan.  Which  of  these  three 
nations  has  had  the  greatest  influence  on  the  history  of  the 
world  would  be  hard  to  say.  It  was  a  disadvantage  to  the 
Arabs  that  Muhammad  died  just  when  his  conquests  began  to 
extend  beyond  the  deserts  of  Arabia.  And  yet  the  religious 
and  national  impulses  given  by  him  were  so  strong  that, 
within  a  century,  half  the  known  world  was  in  the  power,  and 
bore  the  stamp  of  Islam.  The  Near  East  and  Northern  Africa 
as  far  as  the  Sahara  have  borne  that  impress  for  a  thousand 
years.  The  Arabic  language  has  had  the  wonderful  effect, 
not  only  of  ousting  Semitic  languages  related  to  it,  but  of 
well-nigh  absorbing  a  number  of  ancient,  entirely  unrelated 
languages,  such  as  Egyptian  and  Berber,  making  the  un- 
known, though  beautiful  dialect  of  the  desert  Beduins  the 
lingua  franca  for  200,000,000  Moslems,  and  the  language  of 
the  religion  and  theology  of  Islam.  Let  us  compare  Islam 
with  Christianity  and  Judaism,  the  other  two  great  religions 
which  originated  among  the  Semites.  Christianity,  too, 
worked  wonders,  bringing  the  mighty  Roman  Empire  and 
almost  the  whole  of  the  then  known  world  under  the  in- 
fluences of  the  Cross.  Yet  Islam  in  a  single  century  robbed 
Christianity  of  half  of  her  dominion,  and  established  itself  there 
so  firmly  that  the   Christian  Churches  and  the  powers  of 


272     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Europe  have  been  able  to  win  back  only  here  and  there  a  little 
territory  on  the  border  of  Islam.  Judaism  was,  from  the  be- 
ginning, confined  as  a  national  religion  to  the  tiny  nation  of 
Israel.  Only  for  a  little  while  did  it  develop  a  great  propa- 
ganda, which  did  not  belong  to  its  nature,  and  the  impulse  to 
which  vanished  forever  with  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem. 
Islam,  too,  made  its  appearance  as  the  national  religion  of  the 
Arabs.  Allah  speaks  Arabic  in  heaven,  and  the  Koran  may 
be  written  and  read  only  in  Arabic.  The  cry  of  the  muezzin 
and  the  five  daily  prayers  are  uttered  in  Arabic  throughout 
the  Muhammadan  world.  Instruction  in  the  theology  of 
Islam  also  may  be  given  only  in  that  tongue.  Mecca  and 
Medina  are  the  religious  capitals.  Yet  Islam,  in  spite  of  this 
national  character,  developed  a  gigantic  propaganda,  and  has 
bound  non-Arab  peoples  to  itself  so  fast  that  they  resist  the 
entrance  of  every  other  religion  with  tenacious  fanaticism. 

But,  while  the  Arab  people  and  the  Arab  religion  were  go- 
ing conquering  over  the  world,  Arabia  itself,  the  "  Cradle  of 
Islam,"  was  sinking  back  into  a  condition  of  historical  insig- 
nificance. After  the  Omayyads  had,  in  661,  only  thirty  years 
after  Muhammad's  death,  removed  the  capital  to  Damascus, 
Arabia  ceased  to  play  any  part  in  Islam  and  its  conquestsj 
though  it  retained  the  place  of  honour  as  the  guardian  of  the 
Kaaba  and  of  Muhammad's  tomb.  At  the  present  day  the 
political  condition  of  Arabia  is  pitiably  primitive.  Only  the 
western  coast  and  part  of  the  eastern  are  subject  to  the  Sultan, 
who  is  forced  to  assert  his  power  over  the  holy  cities,  Mecca 
and  Medina,  since  his  prestige  as  khalif  depends  upon  his  do- 
ing so.  This  explains  why  the  Hejaz  Kailway  from  Damascus 
to  Mecca  was  pushed  in  such  feverish  haste,  in  order  to  bring 
the  holy  cities  into  close  connection  with  Constantinople.  In 
Yemen,  the  ancient  Sheba  in  the  southwest,  and  in  the  dis- 
trict of  El  Hasa  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  the  Turkish  power  is 
very  weak.  With  difficulty  it  has  at  length  asserted  itself  in 
Yemen  against  the  rebellion  which  lasted  from  1903  to  1905. 
The  rest  of  Arabia,  the  interior,  the  South  and  the  East,  do 
not  even  nominally  submit  to  the  government  of  Turkey.    la 


Syria  and  Palestine  273 

the  interior,  Muhammad  Ibn  el  Wahhab  (died  lYSY)  and 
Prince  Saud  established  the  Wahhab  Empire  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  In  the  southeast  the  imams  have  founded  the  King- 
dom of  Oman,  with  Maskat  as  its  capital.  On  the  southern 
coast  of  Hadramaut  there  are  several  little  sultanates.  The 
Beduins  are  still  as  impatient  as  ever  of  any  strict  political 
government,  and  many  are  said  to  be  heathens,  or  at  least 
only  nominal  Muhammadans. 

(h)  Aden,  the  southwestern  gate  of  Arabia.  When  the  call 
came  to  Protestants  to  take  the  Gospel  to  Muhammadans, 
Arabia  first  attracted  attention.  General  Haig  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  strongly  advocated  the  beginning 
of  work  in  Aden.  He  wrote  in  1882  in  the  Intelligencer,  the 
organ  of  the  society,  a  significant  article  on  Aden  as  the  Gate 
of  Arabia,  laying  extensive  plans  before  the  society  for  a  mis- 
sion in  Southern  Arabia  and  Somaliland.  He  himself  went 
to  make  enquiries  in  those  lands  (1886).  The  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  adopted  his  plans,  stationing  the  medical  mis- 
sionary, Dr.  Harpur,  who  had  been  in  Egypt,  temporarily  in 
Aden  and  Hodaida.  But,  in  the  meantime,  at  the  request  of 
Haig,  a  talented  Scotsman,  the  Hon.  Dr.  Ion  Keith  Fal- 
coner, a  son  of  the  Earl  of  Kintore,  and  professor  of  Arabic 
in  "Cambridge,  had  settled  in  Aden,  and  had  begun  mission 
work  in  the  desert  village  of  Sheikh  Othman,  in  a  grove  of 
date-palms,  the  only  one  in  the  neighbourhood.  Unfortu- 
nately he  soon  fell  a  victim  to  malaria,  dying  on  the  11th  of 
May,  1887.  At  once  his  mother  and  his  widow  each  offered 
£300  a  year  for  the  continuance  of  the  work,  and  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  to  which  he  had  belonged,  adopted  Aden 
as  a  main  station,  while  the  Church  Missionairy  Society  very 
tactfully  retired  from  the  neighbourhood.  The  work  in 
Sheikh  Othman  proved  to  be  very  arduous.  The  missionaries 
were,  to  be  sure,  protected,  since  the  district  belonged  to  Eng- 
land, and  the  place  lay  on  the  great  caravan  route  between 
Aden  and  Yemen,  one  of  the  most  important  and  frequented 
roads  in  the  peninsula ;  on  some  days  more  than  a  thousand 
camels  would  pass  the  mission  station,  affording  a  splendid 


274     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

opportunity  for  sending  Christian  literature  into  the  interior 
of  Arabia.  But  the  Arabs  proved  to  be  unapproachable.  It 
was  only  an  episode  that  during  a  few  years  some  hundreds 
of  liberated  galley  slaves  lived  in  the  settlement,  for  soon  they 
were  passed  on  to  Lovedale  in  South  Africa  to  be  educated. 
The  work  of  the  mission  centred  in  the  medical  activity.  Dr. 
Young  and  Dr.  Morris  treated  thousands  in  the  hospital  and 
the  dispensary,  especially  in  times  of  cholera,  plague  and  other 
pestilences.  Conversions  were  few,  and  were  mostly  among 
such  as  had  been  for  some  time  in  the  service  of  the  mission. 
The  missionaries  now  and  then  had  the  joy  of  baptizing  some 
converted  native  of  India,  who,  not  venturing  to  join  the 
Christian  Church  at  home,  now  fled  thither  to  do  so.  The 
missionaries  also  attended  to  the  spiritual  needs  of  the  gar- 
rison in  the  furnace-like  fort  of  Aden,  and  of  the  hundreds  of 
sailors  of  English  vessels  calling  at  Steamer  Point  in  Aden 
harbour.  It  is  now  the  intention  to  establish  a  second  station 
at  Dhala,  about  eighty  miles  inland,  on  the  border  of  the 
British  territory,  where  attempts  have  already  been  made  to 
make  a  beginning.  In  Makalla,  on  the  Hadramaut  coast, 
Hoyer,  a  Dane,  attempted  to  establish  a  Danish  mission.  But, 
being  driven  away  by  the  local  sultan,  he  very  sensibly  joined 
the  Scots  at  Sheikh  Othman.  He  there  undertook  the  school 
work,  in  which  he  has  been  assisted  by  lady  missionaries  from 
Denmark. 

(c)  The  East  Coast  of  Arabia.  Eising  precipitously  out  of 
the  sea  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Arabia,  there  is  a  rocky  range 
of  mountains  forming  a  large  peninsula,  bounded  inland  by 
vast  deserts.  This  is  the  Kingdom  of  Oman,  at  the  head  of 
which  stands  the  imam  or  sultan  of  Maskat,  a  rock -girt  town 
which,  like  the  port-town  Muttra,  of  equal  size,  and  about  two 
miles  distant,  lies  in  the  narrow,  desolate,  burning  coast-plain. 
The  Persian  traveller,  Abdar  Eezalc,  who  was  there  in  1842, 
writes  :  "  The  heat  was  so  intense  that  it  ^burned  the  marrow 
in  the  bones ;  the  sword  in  its  scabbard  melted  like  wax,  and 
the  gems  which  adorned  the  handle  of  the  dagger  were  reduced 
to  coal.     In  the  plains  the  chase  became  a  matter  of  perfect 


Syria  and  Palestine  275" 

ease,  for  the  desert  was  filled  with  roasted  gazelles."  Inland 
the  land  rises  abruptly  to  a  height  of  from  5,000  to  6,000  feet, 
where  there  are  green  fields  and  a  population  of  about 
1,000,000.  Maskat  dates  are  celebrated.  Unfortunately  the 
interior  is  rendered  unsafe  by  reason  of  inter-tribal  disputes, 
which  often  put  a  stop  to  trade  and  travel  for  months  at  a 
time.  The  Arabs  of  Oman  are  an  enterprising  people.  It  is 
they  who  have  chiefly  colonized  the  east  coast  of  Africa,  and 
the  sultanate  of  Zanzibar  was,  far  into  the  nineteenth  century, 
a  dependency  of  their  imamate.  The  connection  of  Oman 
with  East  Africa  was  what  led  to  the  sending  of  the  first 
missionaries  to  Maskat.  Alexander  Mackay,  the  pioneer  mis- 
sionary in  Uganda,  repeatedly  insisted  on  the  necessity  of 
energetically  counteracting  the  increasing  Arab  and  Moslem 
influence  at  its  source,  Maskat.  The  Arabs  in  Africa  would 
be  deeply  impressed  by  the  establishment  of  a  strong  mission 
in  their  homeland.  This  call  found  an  echo  in  the  heart  of  a 
veteran  missionary  in  India,  Bishop  Valpy  French  of  Lahore,^ 
For  forty  years  he  had  stood  in  the  forefront  of  the  battle  in 
Northern  India,  having  founded  the  St.  John's  College  in 
Agra,  one  of  the  best  Indian  mission  colleges ;  and,  later  on,  a 
divinity  school  in  Lahore.  He  served  for  ten  years  as  the  first 
bishop  of  Lahore.  The  infirmities  of  increasing  age  and  dif- 
ferences with  the  Church  Missionary  Society  induced  hira  to 
resign  his  ofiice.  But  the  veteran  did  not  think  of  laying  down 
his  arms.  He  had  come  into  such  close  contact  with  the 
Muhammadans  in  the  Panjab,  that  he  had  a  burning  desire  to 
engage  in  mission  work  in  the  native  land  of  Islam.  Mackay's 
appeal  pointed  out  the  way  ;  he  could  begin  in  Maskat.  To 
his  grief  the  Church  Missionary  Society  would  not  entertain 
his  proposal,  but,  not  to  be  balked,  he  went  as  an  independent 
missionary.  Although  in  his  sixty-seventh  year,  he  set  out  for 
Maskat  in  February,  1891,  ill  supplied  with  the  comforts  suited 
to  his  years.  Arabic  he  knew  fairly  well,  and  he  diligently 
studied  the  theological  literature  of  Islam.  His  calmness  and 
dialectic  ability  fitted  him  to  be  a  preacher  to  the  easily  excited 
*  Herbert  Birks,  "  Life  of.T.  Valpy  French,  Bishop  of  Lahore,"  2  vols. 


276     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Moslems.  He  was,  however,  unable  to  bear  the  heat  of  Maskat 
after  the  hardships  of  a  laborious  life  of  forty  years  in  the 
tropics.  He  died  of  exhaustion  on  the  14th  of  May,  1891. 
His  example  had  a  powerful  effect  on  his  old  friend,  Bishop 
Stuart,  of  Waiapu  in  New  Zealand,  who  also  gave  up  his 
bishopric  in  his  old  age  in  order  to  become  a  missionary  among 
the  Moslems  of  Persia.  The  interest  in  missions  among  Mu- 
hammadans,  which  agitated  the  Protestant  world  in  the 
eighties,  was  also  felt  in  the  theological  college  of  the  Dutch 
Eeformed  Church  at  New  Brunswick,  New  Jersey,  in  the 
United  States.  The  professor  of  Arabic,  J.  G.  Lansing,  a  son 
of  the  veteran  of  the  American  Mission  in  Egypt,  agreed  with 
three  of  his  students  to  start  a  Protestant  mission  in  Arabia. 
Since  their  Church  did  not  encourage  them  in  this  effort,  they 
went  as  independent  missionaries.  An  opportune  legacy  of 
£500  furnished  them  with  means  sufficient  to  cover  equipment 
and  initial  expenses.  In  1889  James  Cantine  and  S.  M. 
Zwemer  set  out  for  Aden  by  way  of  Syria  and  Egypt,  and, 
after  becoming  somewhat  acquainted  with  the  land  and  peo- 
ple, they  founded,  between  the  years  1891  and  1893,  three 
main  stations,  Basra  in  1891,  Bahrein  in  1892,  and  Maskat  in 
1893.  In  1894  this  mission  was  transferred  to  the  Dutch  Ee- 
formed Church  of  the  United  States.  It  has  not  been  extended 
beyond  these  three  stations.  The  Bahrein  Islands  are  a  small 
group  off  the  centre  of  the  west  coast  of  the  Persian  Gulf. 
Since  186Y  they  have  been  under  the  protection  of  England. 
They  are  celebrated  for  their  great  fisheries,  which  yield  an- 
nually pearls  of  the  value  of  £300,000.  Menama  is  the  chief 
town,  and  is  the  mission  station.  On  the  mainland,  opposite 
the  islands,  is  the  long  sandy  province  of  El  Hasa,  where  many 
preaching  tours  are  made.  The  station  at  Basra  is  unfor- 
tunately under  the  wretched  Turkish  control,  which  opposes  all 
mission  work.  Colporteurs  are  allowed  only  in  districts  where 
Jews  and  Christians  are  in  the  majority.  No  school  may  be 
opened,  and  no  church  built,  unless  there  are  at  least  twelve 
Protestant  families  in  the  place.  Muhamraadans  who  venture 
to  come  into  touch  with  the  Protestants  are  placed  under 


Syria  and  Palestine  277 

police  supervision,  and,  if  they  too  frequently  enter  the  mis- 
sion house,  they  are  forbidden  to  continue  these  visits.  If 
they  still  show  signs  of  inclining  to  Protestantism,  they  dis- 
appear, one  perhaps  to  be  a  soldier  far  away  in  Asia  Minor, 
another  never  to  be  heard  of  again.  Since  the  public  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel  is  forbidden  and  there  are,  as  yet,  no  native 
congregations  to  unite  in  public  worship,  the  missionary 
activity   is    limited    to    three    kinds   of    preparatory   work. 

(1)  Journeys  are  undertaken  from  all  three  stations  by  the 
missionaries,  and  even  more  by  their  colporteurs  and  other  as- 
sistants, far  into  the  interior ;  from  Basra,  by  river  boats 
through  the  delta  of  the  Shatt  el  Arab,  and  from  Maskat  on 
camel  back.  On  these  journeys  they  usually  meet  with  a 
hearty  welcome  and  gain  some  foothold.  In  this  way  three 
out-stations  have  been  formed  ;  Nasarieh  and  Amara  in  the 
Shatt  el  Arab,  and  Kuweit,  the  projected  terminus  of  the 
Bagdad  railway.  In  the  mission  stations,  as  on  all  these  jour- 
neys, a  diligent  work  of  colportage  is  carried  on.  Several 
bookstores  are  kept  in  connection  with  this  branch  of  the  work. 

(2)  Medical  mission  work  is  perhaps  equally  important,  carried 
on  as  it  is  at  all  the  stations.  In  Maskat,  however,  there  is 
thus  far  only  the  missionary's  wife  to  attend  to  the  dispensary 
work.  In  Basra  the  building  of  a  hospital  is  prevented  by 
Turkish  jealousy,  and  unsuitable  native  houses  have  to  be  used 
instead.  There  is,  however,  a  fully  equipped  hospital  in  the 
Bahrein  Islands,  the  Mason  Memorial  Hospital,  with  two 
physicians  and  a  nurse.  Altogether  31,000  patients  are  treated 
in  the  course  of  a  year.  (3)  "Work  among  women,  and  schools, 
are  still  in  their  initial  stage,  both  being  much  hampered  by  the 
stupidity  and  fanaticism  of  the  Moslems.  In  Basra  only  a  small 
school  can  be  held  in  a  private  house.  In  Maskat  it  was  hoped 
that  eighteen  negro  slaves  who  had  been  liberated  by  the  Eng- 
lish, and  entrusted  to  the  care  of  the  mission,  might  have 
formed  the  nucleus  of  a  school.  No  native  Arab  children, 
however,  came  to  it,  and  the  slaves  showed  no  inclination  to 
learn.  So  the  school  had  to  be  given  up.  But  a  second  at- 
tempt was  made  in  Maskat  in  1905.    It  is  only  in  British 


278     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Bahrein  that  there  is  a  regular  boys'  and  girls'  school.  Four 
lady  missionaries,  in  addition  to  the  missionaries'  wives,  visit  in 
the  harems,  such  visits  being  rendered  more  than  ordinarily 
arduous  by  the  oppressive  heat  in  the  stuffy  houses.  They 
complain  much  of  the  obtuseness  they  meet  with,  but  rejoice 
over  the  slightest  sign  of  awakening  interest. 

It  is  not  reasonable  to  expect  great  results  from  a  Muham- 
madan  mission  which  has  been  at  work  for  only  seventeen 
years,  and  that,  too,  in  so  trying  a  climate  and  so  isolated  a 
position.  One  of  the  pioneers  of  the  mission,  Peter  Zwemer, 
died  in  1898,  a  victim  of  the  climate.  A  talented  member  of 
the  same  family,  the  Kev.  S.  M.  Zwemer,  D.  D.,  has  made  the 
Protestant  world  acquainted  with  missions  among  the  Arabs. 
He  is  not  only  an  indefatigable  writer,^  but  also  in  person  a 
champion  of  missions  among  Muhammadans  in  general.  He 
was  the  originator  of  the  conference  of  missionaries  among 
Muhammadans,  which  was  held  in  Cairo  from  the  4th  to  the 
9th  of  April,  1906. 

'  "Arabia,  the  Cradle  of  Islam,"  3d  edition,  New  York,  1900,  "Islam,  a 
Challenge  to  Faith, ' '  New  York,  1908.  ' '  The,Mohammedan  World  of  To-day, " 
New  York. 


PERSIA 

PERSIA  has  an  area  of  about  640,000  square  miles,  and 
is,  therefore,  about  two  and  a  half  times  the  size  of  the 
German  Empire.  Its  population,  however,  is  only 
Y,500,000.  Large  stretches  of  country,  particularly  in  the  in- 
terior, are  desert,  void  of  human  beings.  More  than  half  of 
the  country  has  only  one  inhabitant  to  the  square  mile.  Only 
the  provinces  along  the  boundary  are  at  airthickly  populated. 
Of  non-Muhammadans  there  are  only  about  100,000.  Islam, 
which  overran  the  country  after  the  battle  of  Kadesia  in  634 
A.  D,,  swept  away  nearly  all  the  Zoroastrians  who  had  enjoyed 
state  protection  under  the  Sassanids  (531-628),  as  well  as 
nearly  all  the  Christians,  who  at  that  time  were  thickly  scat- 
tered over  the  country.  Only  in  the  province  of  Azerbaijan, 
in  the  northwest,  is  a  remnant  of  the  ancient  Persian  Church 
still  met  with,  the  so-called  ISTestorians,  or  Syrians,  whose 
number  is  23,000  to  25,000. 

The  great  mass  of  Muhammadans  is  a  curious  conglomerate. 
In  the  southwestern  province  of  Khuristan  there  are  250,000 
Arab  nomad  immigrants,  who  so  predominate  that  the  prov- 
ince goes  also  by  the  name  of  Arabistan.  In  the  wild 
mountainous  western  provinces  900,000  Kurdish  bandits  and 
Lurs  have  their  homes,  the  former  to  the  north  and  the  latter 
to  the  south  of  the  latitude  of  Hamadan.  In  the  northern 
provinces,  from  Azerbaijan  to  Khorasan,  there  dwell  nearly 
1,Y50,000  people,  belonging  to  nomadic  tribes  of  Turks  and 
Turkomans,  known  as  Hat,  the  "  tribes."  But  the  main  por- 
tion of  the  Muhammadan  population  is  the  5,500,000  Persians, 
who  are  the  only  great  and  historic  nation  of  the  Indo-Ger- 
manio  stock  that  has  been  almost  entirely  Islamized.  True  to 
the  genius  of  the  family  of  peoples  to  which  it  belongs,  the 

279 


28o     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Persian  nation  has  contributed  greatly,  and  in  most  original 
fashion,  to  the  further  development  of  Islam.  "We  will  point 
out  but  three  of  these  contributions. 

(a)  The  Shiah.  Even  before  Muhammad's  appearance, 
there  had  been  jealousy  between  the  Omayya  and  the  Hashim 
branches  of  his  family,  the  Koreish.  It  was  to  the  latter 
branch  that  the  Prophet  and  the  majority  of  his  first  followers 
belonged,  while  his  bitterest  opponent,  Abu  Sufian,  belonged 
to  the  former.  The  quarrel  became  acute  during  the  first 
decades  after  the  death  of  Muhammad,  in  consequence  of  the 
intrigues  of  Ayesha,  the  most  influential  of  the  Prophet's 
wives,  and  the  boundless  ambition  of  Muawiyya,  the  son  of 
Abu  Sufian.  The  result  was  a  fight  to  the  death  between  the 
Prophet's  family  and  the  Omayyads.  The  sword,  to  which 
the  Prophet  had  appealed  for  the  authorization  of  his  prophetic 
ofiice,  brought  ruin  upon  his  own  family.  Ali  was  murdered, 
Hasan  and  Husein,  his  two  sons,  were  slain  in  battle.  The 
khalifate  passed  to  the  Omayya  family,  while  the  Prophet's 
family  was  thrust  aside.  If  there  had  been  no  truly  religious 
impulses  in  Muhammad's  movement,  this  violent  and  ruthless 
pushing  aside  of  his  family  might  have  taken  place  without 
causing  such  a  tremendous  commotion  and  division  among  his 
followers.  As  it  was,  a  portion  of  the  Islamic  peoples  sep- 
arated from  the  khalifate  of  the  Omayyads,  and,  faithful  to 
the  memory  of  Muhammad,  gathered  round  his  son-in-law, 
Ali,  and  All's  two  sons,  Hasan  and  Husein.  The  tragic  end 
of  those  three,  combined  with  the  fact  that  they  were  descend- 
ants of  the  Prophet,  surrounded  them  with  a  halo.  The  Shiah 
(Sect),  as  the  followers  of  Ali  were  named,  was  thus  originated. 
Though  taking  its  rise  in  political  troubles,  it  could  maintain 
itself  only  by  making  a  religious  claim.  Both  religious  and 
secular  power  had  been  united  in  Muhammad.  The  Omayyads 
had  assumed  the  secular  power,  the  rule  of  the  world.  So  the 
Shiahs  claimed  the  religious  succession.  Ali,  Hasan,  Husein, 
and  their  immediate  successors  were  thus,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Shiahs,  the  legitimate  imams,  the  religious  leaders  and  teach- 
ers of  the  Moslem  community.    Thus  the  peculiar  doctrine  of 


Persia  281 

the  imams,  the  shibboleth  of  the  Shiites  (Shiahs),  took  its 
rise ;  of  this  doctrine  we  have  spoken  at  some  length  in  chap- 
ter four.  Intelligible  as  this  dogmatic  development  is,  arising 
out  of  loyalty  to  the  Prophet,  it  was,  nevertheless,  impossible 
to  carry  it  through  without  rejecting  the  Sunna,  or  "tradi- 
tion," which  was  cunningly  used  by  the  opposite  party  in  sup- 
port of  its  pretensions  to  supreme  power,  and,  further,  it  was 
necessary  to  adopt  a  free  allegorical  exegesis  of  the  Koran  ^ 
itself,  since  the  Koran  is  silent  about  the  imams.  But  in  thus 
freeing  themselves  to  some  extent  from  a  literal  interpretation  ^ 
of  the  inspired  book,  they  had  undermined  the  theological 
foundation.  In  this  way  it  came  about  that,  while  in  Sunnitic 
Islam  the  doctrinal  development  soon  came  to  a  standstill, 
and,  after  the  first  centuries,  no  new  sects  arose,  the  Shiah,  on  ^ 
the  other  hand,  experienced  numerous  outbursts  of  dissent  of 
the  oddest  character.  In  the  pages  of  this  book  we  meet  with 
the  Druses,  Ismailites,  Nusairiyeh,  Metawileh,  and  Babists, 
and  there  are  innumerable  other  sects.  The  orthodox  Shiah 
itself,  also,  has  made  full  use  of  the  wide  scope  offered  to  it 
for  theological  development.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that, 
in  some  form  or  other,  allegorical  exegesis,  an  inclination  to 
theosophical  and  mystical  speculations,  a  predilection  for  mys- 
tical dervish  orders,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of 
souls,  are  the  common  property  of  Shiites  of  all  kinds. 

Sunna  and  Shiah  fought  long  and  fiercely.  For  a  long  time 
Egypt,  North  Africa,  Syria  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  East 
were  Shiite.  Yet  the  Sunna  finally  won  the  supremacy,  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  the  Arabs  held  to  the  Sunna,  and  that 
the  Turks  adopted  it.  Yet  when,  in  1502,  Ismail  Safi  Shah 
mounted  the  Persian  throne  as  the  first  native  king,  after  a 
Mongol  government  of  nearly  250  years,  he  decreed  that  the 
Shiah  should  be  the  national  religion  in  his  kingdom.  And, 
ever  since,  Persia  has  been  a  stronghold  of  Shiism,  Outside 
of  Persia,  it  appears  only  sporadically,  as  a  sect. 

(5)  Sujism.  By  far  the  most  important  doctrinal  develop- 
ment of  the  Shiah  is  sufism,  one  of  the  most  profound  systems 
of  theology  ever  produced  by  any  race.    By  ignoring  the 


282     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Sunna  and  adopting  an  allegorical  exegesis,  a  wider  opportunity- 
was  gained,  as  we  have  seen,  for  a  free  development  of  theology. 
The  innate  speculative  faculty  of  the  Indo-Germanic  race 
asserted  itself,  receiving,  in  addition,  from  Zoroastrianism  a 
tendency  to  take  a  profound  view  of  life.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  specifically  Persian  doctrinal  development  owes  its 
origin  to  three  influences :  (1)  to  Indian  pantheism,  (2)  to  the 
Neoplatonism  of  the  Grecian  schools  of  philosophy  in  its  later 
form,  and  (3)  to  the  gnostic  speculations  of  ancient  Christian 
sects.  But  it  is  at  the  present  day  scarcely  possible  to  unravel 
this  tangle  of  influences,  which  enriched  the  world  of  Persian 
thought,  and  to  trace  them  back  to  their  various  individual 
sources.  The  determining  factor  was  religious  and  intellectual 
dissatisfaction  with  the  dead  forms  of  Islamic  worship,  and 
with  the  incomplete  and  dry  scholasticism  of  the  orthodox 
doctrine.  This  Persian  theosophy  was  rendered  peculiarly 
attractive  by  the  grace  and  finish  of  the  poetic  form  into  which 
it  was  cast.  Persian  poetry  is  penetrated  with  its  spirit. 
The  greatest  Persian  poets,  Sadi,  Hafiz,  and  Jalal-ud-Din  Kumi 
are  profound  philosophers.  This  wonderful  combination  of 
the  most  beautiful  poetry  with  the  profoundest  philosophy  is 
unique  in  the  history  of  literature,  and  exercises  even  on 
Oriental  students  in  the  Occident  an  influence  that  is  often 
nothing  short  of  intoxicating. 

In  giving  a  sketch  of  the  system  of  sufism,  we  shall  make 
a  distinction  between  its  fundamental  principles  and  its 
practice.  Only  the  Godhead  is  real,  essential  being,  it 
alone  existing  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  in  unapproach- 
able majesty.  Though  the  universe  rests  on  the  divine  will,  it 
has  no  being  of  its  own,  in  fact  it  is  not,  but,  rather,  only 
appears  to  be,  being  intended  by  God  to  be  a  mirror,  in 
which  the  eternal  Godhead  is  reflected.  Conditional  being  is 
granted  to  man  alone,  who  possesses  existence  in  so  far  as  his 
spirit  is  a  part  or  an  effluence  of  divine  substance,  but  who 
does  not  exist  in  so  far  as  his  body  and  his  world  of  sense 
share  in  the  unreality  of  the  universe.  Man's  being  rests  on 
a  complicated  process  of  creative  emanation.    At  the  begin- 


Persia  283 

ning  of  all  things  God  caused  to  emanate  from  His  own 
hidden  being  the  original  substance,  light,  in  order  by  its 
means  to  establish  relations  between  Himself  and  the  world, 
which,  in  so  far  as  it  possessed  existence  at  all,  existed  apart 
from  Himself.  Of  this  light-substance  He  formed  the  throne 
of  His  glory,  the  tablets  of  the  world's  destiny  and,  finally, 
the  soul  of  man.  From  among  men  He  has  at  various  times 
ordained  individuals,  who  have  possessed  a  particularly 
bright  and  full  measure  of  the  light-substance.  These  are 
the  prophets,  and,  above  all,  Muhammad,  who  was,  in  fact, 
identified  with  the  light-substance,  which  is  often  termed 
"  the  spirit  of  Muhammad."  The  task  of  man  is  to  return 
from  his  own  being,  conditioned  as  it  is  by  its  union  with 
the  non-existent,  to  true,  pure  being,  to  the  Godhead,  the 
original  Light.  One  easily  recognizes  here  the  influence  of 
Yedanta  philosophy,  and  of  the  Christian  logos  theory,  as  it 
appeared  in  the  gnostic  systems  of  emanation.  But  this  specu- 
lative, theosophical  view  of  the  universe  is  not  the  original 
contribution  of  sufism,  having  been,  in  its  main  outlines, 
adopted  from  outside,  and  given  a  beautiful  form  in  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  Persia.  The  characteristic  doctrine  of 
sufism  is,  rather,  the  "  ascent  of  man  to  God."  In  order  to 
solve  its  religious-ethical  problem,  and  to  lead  the  soul  out  of 
the  fetters  of  non-existence  back  to  the  pure,  true  entity 
whence  it  emanated,  sufism  makes  use  neither  of  the  enquir- 
ing intellect,  nor  of  the  practical  will ;  neither  of  orthodox 
dogma  nor  of  the  fixed  forms  of  worship  in  the  mosque ;  it 
sets  in  activity,  rather,  a  specific  faculty  of  the  soul,  intuition, 
the  inner  eye,  taur  (the  imagination).  By  complete  self-ab- 
straction from  the  surrounding  world  of  sense,  with  its  impres- 
sions, sensual  attractions  and  duties,  the  soul  is  to  sink  itself 
into  the  divine  by  contemplation,  thus  returning  to  absorption 
in  the  Godhead  by  a  toilsome  ascent  of  eight  steps.  Only 
the  dervish,  who  has  broken  away  from  all  connection  with 
the  outside  world,  is  able  successfully  to  enter  upon  this 
path ;  when  he  has  taken  his  first  step  in  it  he  becomes  a 
salilc,  a  "wanderer."    But,  since  the  way  is  long  and  the 


284     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

goal  lofty,  and  since  neither  the  teaching  nor  the  practice  of 
Islam  affords  any  helpful  guidance,  it  is  necessary  for  him  to 
have  a  murshid,  a  spiritual  guide,  to  whom  he  must  commit 
himself  in  utter  confidence  and  unquestioning  subjection. 
Only  so  may  he  hope  to  avoid  losing  his  way  on  the  difficult 
path.  The  eight  steps  of  the  ascent  are  (1)  service,  the  per- 
formance of  the  Islamic  precepts  for  life  and  worship ;  (2)  love 
to  God,  which  the  poets  extol  with  particular  zest,  often 
painting  it  in  bold  colours,  which  suggest  the  passions  of 
erotic  love;  (3)  seclusion;  (4)  knowledge;  (5)  ecstasy; 
(6)  truth;  (7)  union  with  God;  (8)  extinction.  In  order 
that  intuition  may  become  fully  effective  it  is  necessary  that 
the  ordinary  functions  of  the  intellect  and  emotions  be 
suspended  as  much  as  possible,  the  hidden  powers  of  the  "imag- 
ination," or  subconsciousness,  being  allowed  full  play  in  their 
stead.  The  means  to  this  end  are  spasmodic  movements  of  the 
body,  dancing,  hemp-smoking  and  the  use  of  other  stupifying 
drugs,  but,  above  all,  psychopathic  influences  of  the  hidden 
life  of  the  soul,  such  as  hypnotism  and  clairvoyance,  in  which 
the  sufists  had  attained  a  high  pitch  of  perfection  long  before 
occidental  science  began  to  observe  those  remarkable 
phenomena  in  the  twilight  of  the  soul-life.  (Compare  what  is 
said  of  the  dervish  orders,  and  of  the  mysticism  of  Islam,  in 
Chapter  I,  2.) 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  a  race  naturally  inclined  to 
mysticism  and  repulsed  by  the  prose  of  real  life,  might 
prefer  to  spend  life  in  the  mysterious  depths  of  an  artificially 
produced  semi-consciousness.  It  is  equally  clear  what  a  dark 
shadow  this  artificial  and  unreal  life  of  the  mind  must  cast  on 
the  exalted  philosophy  upon  which  it  rests.  Occidental 
scholars  are  inclined  to  confine  themselves  to  the  pantheistic 
theories  of  sufism,  while  they  pass  by,  as  unpleasing,  the  dark 
shadows  of  mystical  practice.  So  the  actual  facts  are  mis- 
represented, and  this  false  representation  is  one  of  the  grounds 
of  the  exaggerated  extolling  of  this  Islamic  philosophy.  Yet 
this  mystical  practice  is  the  specific  characteristic  of  sufism. 

We  must  enquire  into  some  of  the  effects  of  such  mystical 


Persia  285 

speculation.  (1)  Since  it  is  the  chief  object  of  this  mysticism  to 
lead  by  the  eight  steps  of  intuition  to  the  certain  goal  of  real 
union  with  God,  an  experience  which  the  soul  is  to  attain  in- 
dependently of  the  Koran  and  the  mosque,  all  the  external 
forms  of  doctrine  and  practice  are  despised  in  comparison 
with  that  "  royal  road."  The  mystic  became  indifferent  to 
both  mosque  and  church,  to  the  Koran  and  the  Bible,  to  the 
cross  and  the  crescent.  One  often  finds,  in  sufist  poets,  pas- 
sages which  dispose  of  every  kind  of  historical  religion  with 
equal  contempt.  One  result  of  this  is  that  freedom  from  the 
fetters  of  the  blind  fanaticism,  elsewhere  so  sadly  prevalent 
in  Islam,  renders  possible  the  formation  of  a  sometimes  sur- 
prisingly just  estimate  of  other  religions,  even  of  lower  forms 
of  worship,  such  as  idolatry.  But  it  more  frequently  happens 
that  a  destructive  scepticism  grows  out  of  this  contempt  of 
outward  forms,  such  a  scepticism  as  we  see,  for  instance,  in 
the  famous  Eubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam.  Sufism  is  alto- 
gether unfavourable  to  a  calm  appreciation  of  Christianity  as 
a  divine,  just  provision   for  the  salvation  of  mankind. 

(2)  If  the  taur  (imagination)  is  the  spiritual  function  brought 
into  play  by  the  sufist  mystic,  and  if  a  murshid  be  indispen- 
sable to  any  one  beginning  to  tread  the  mystic  road,  then  the 
way  is  evidently  opened  for  the  formation  of  the  most  various 
sects  and  orders,  since  the  number  of  those  who  desire  to 
qualify  themselves  to  become  murshids  is  naturally  great; 
and,  as  soon  as  any  one  is  recognized  as  a  murshid  by  a  larger 
or  smaller  circle,  he  at  once  acquires  limitless  influence  over 
his  disciples,  since  they  are  bound  to  obey  him  blindly. 
And,  further,  in  the  semi-darkness  of  mystic  clairvoyance 
there  are  methods  of  exciting  and  increasing  the  powers  of 
imagination  and  even  of  inciting  to  superhuman  acts  ;  methods, 
many  of  which  are  harmless,  though  many  are  also  of  a  doubt- 
ful, and  even  of  an  obviously  dangerous,  character.  Every 
murshid  considers  his  own  method  to  be  the  most  effectual, 
and  it  becomes  the  shibboleth  of  his  order.  This  is  the  soil 
in  which  the  dervish  orders  have  grown,  developing  their 
mystic  methods,  which  appear  so  abstruse  to  us. 


286     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

(3)  If  the  "  imagination "  and  other  similar  psychical 
powers  be  alone  needful  for  the  mystical  ascent,  the  display 
of  practical  piety  in  public  and  private  life  loses  importance. 
The  mystic  who  is  undergoing  absorption  in  Allah  is  raised 
above  good  and  evil ;  his  conduct  in  this  non-existent  world 
does  not  affect  his  progress  in  the  road  of  intuition.  Thus, 
in  presenting  itself  as  the  "  royal  road,"  in  opposition  to  the 
common  Islamism  of  mosque  and  university,  sufism  under- 
mined the  foundations  of  morality,  and  deadened  the  sense  of 
duty.  In  fact  it  was  guilty  of  the  fateful  error  of  separating 
the  specifically  religious  life  from  the  ethical  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  whole,  concentrating  religion  in  an  utterly  subor- 
dinate function  of  the  soul.  This  is  the  more  dangerous  since 
orientals,  quite  apart  from  such  teaching,  are  only  too  strongly 
inclined  to  make  a  thoroughgoing  separation  between  their 
religious  philosophy  and  their  every-day  life.  In  spite  of 
these  dark  shadows,  sufism  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  proofs 
of  the  soul's  hunger  for  communion  with  God,  a  hunger 
which  will  be  satisfied.  Even  Christians  may  find  edification 
in  listening  to  the  strains  of  its  hymns,  which  echo  the  long- 
ing after  true  life  in  God.  And  this  fragrant  lotus  flower  is 
the  more  surprising  since  it  springs  from  the  desert  soil  of  the 
Islamic  belief  in  Allah,  and  blooms  in  contrast  with  the  dry 
formalism  of  the  correct  Muharamadan  practice  of  piety. 

(<?)  Bahism}  The  doctrine  of  the  imams  as  a  series  of 
progressive  agents  of  revelation,  belonging  to  the  family  of 
Muhammad  and  of  Ali,  gave  rise  in  the  nineteenth  century  to 
the  most  effective  and  ideal  religious  movement  within  the 
world  of  Islam.  About  the  beginning  of  that  century,  two 
teachers,  Sheikh  Akhmed  Akhsai  (1Y52-1826)  and  his  disciple, 
Hadji  Seyyid  Kasim,  appeared  in  Kerbela,  the  sacred  place  of 
pilgrimage  and  the  seat  of  learning  of  the  Shiites,  and  further 
developed  the  doctrine  of  the  imams,  teaching  that  in  every 

'E.  G.  Browne,  "  The  Episode  of  the  Bab"  ;  "New History  of  the  Bab."  Dr. 
F.  C.  Andreas,  "Die  Babis  in  Peraien,"  Leipsio,  1896.  Church  at  Home  and 
Abroad,  Vol.  XIV.  Allgemeine  Missions- Zeitschrift,  1894,  pp.  327  ff.  Ev.  Miss. 
Mag.,  1894,  pp.  12  fi.     Sell,  "Essays  on  Islam,"  pp.  46  fE. 


Persia  287 

generation  the  imam,  though  himself  hidden,  has  some  one 
who  communicates  his  revelations,  and  through  whom  he 
guarantees  the  spread  and  the  purity  of  the  true  faith. 

Among  their  disciples  was  a  merchant's  apprentice  from 
Shiraz,  who,  to  his  father's  grief,  gave  up  his  work,  devoting 
himself  to  theological  speculations.  This  was  Ali  Muhammad. 
He  discovered  that  he  possessed  the  qualifications  to  be  such 
a  medium  of  revelation,  and  began,  in  a  small  circle  in  Shiraz 
at  first,  to  call  himself  the  Bab  (gate),  that  is,  the  organ  of 
revelation  of  the  hidden  imam.  Although  a  youth  of  barely 
twenty-four  years,  he  found  a  following.  Among  his  first 
disciples  were  such  important  men  as  the  talented  and  ener- 
getic Mollah  Husein. 

The  life  of  Ali  Muhammad  was  short  and  remarkably  un- 
eventful. At  first  he  claimed  to  be  nothing  more  than  the  Bab, 
the  representative  of  the  hidden  imam  of  his  generation.  This 
claim  he  proved  in  his  Surat  al  Jussuf,  a  treatise  on  Sura  XII  of 
the  Koran,  which  deals  with  the  history  of  Joseph.  But  he 
soon  made  the  further  claim  that  he  himself  was  the  imam, 
who  had  been  hidden  for  centuries,  but  had  now  appeared  as 
the  expected  Imam  Mahdi,  that  is  the  "  Rightly  Led  One," 
whose  calling  it  was  to  introduce  the  time  of  the  final  victory 
of  Islam.  From  that  time  on  he  called  ^himself  the  iT^B^j^ 
(point),  Nukta  i  TJla  (first  point),  or  NuMa  iBeyan  (point  of 
explanation),  and  set  forth  his  claims  in  detail  in  his  most  im- 
portant work,  the  "  Beyan,"  that  is,  the  "  explanation."  The 
original  substance,  light,  the  original  will  of  Allah,  the  first 
creation  of  Allah,  assumes  from  time  to  time  human  form. 
These  "  incarnations  of  the  first  Will  "  are  the  prophets.  Of 
these  there  have  been  an  untold  number  in  the  past,  and  in 
the  future  there  will  be  quite  as  many.  The  last  great  prophet 
was  Muhammad.  The  prophet  of  this  generation  was  the 
Bab.  The  various  incarnations  must  all  be  communications 
of  the  same  divine  revelation,  which,  however,  is  further  de- 
veloped as  the  human  race  progresses.  The  revelation  at  the 
time  of  Abraham  differed  from  that  in  Adam's  time.  Even 
so,  revelation  has  undergone  development  between  the  time  of 


288     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Muhammad  and  the  time  of  the  Bab.  In  every  age  the  reve- 
lation of  the  respective  imam  is  the  highest  and  most  perfect 
in  existence,  and  must  be  accepted  as  such  in  faith.  Thus  the 
teaching  of  the  Bab  now  supplants  that  of  Muhammad,  the 
Beyan  is  the  legitimate  successor  of  the  Koran,  and  the  Bab 
is  to  men  of  the  present  day  what  Muhammad  was  to  men  of 
past  centuries.  The  Bab  is  logical  and  admits  that  after  him 
will  come  he  "  whom  God  will  make  visible,"  that  is,  a  new 
imam,  or  his  bab,  for  a  succeeding  generation.  This  teaching 
of  the  Bab  clears  the  way  for  freer  doctrinal  development. 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  devote  much  space  to  the 
particular  doctrines  which  the  Bab  taught,  on  the  strength 
of  his  being  the  highest  authority  in  the  matter  of  revelation. 
Curiously  enough,  he  thought  that  nineteen  was  the  sacred 
number.  He  found  it  everywhere  in  the  world-scheme,  and 
was  resolved  to  bring  it  to  the  light.  His  sacred  book,  the 
Beyan,  has  nineteen  sections  in  each  of  its  nineteen  chapters ; 
the  Babist  year  has  nineteen  months,  each  with  nineteen  days ; 
the  day  has  nineteen  hours,  each  consisting  of  nineteen 
minutes ;  coins,  taxes  and  even  fines  are  to  be  regulated  on  the 
basis  of  nineteen.  The  Bab  gave  an  original  turn  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  transmigration  of  souls,  common  to  all  Shiites. 
He  maintained  that  every  soul  is,  as  it  were,  a  letter  of  the 
alphabet,  written  by  God.  Just  as  a  child  rubs  out  a  letter 
he  has  written,  until  he  has  done  it  perfectly,  so  every  soul 
reenters  a  body  until  it  has  gained  its  perfect  form. 

More  important  are  the  practical  precepts  of  the  Bab. 
These  accord  greater  rights  to  women,  permitting  them  to  at- 
tend meetings  of  the  men,  abolishing  the  veil  and  rendering 
divorce  more  difficult.  Smoking  is  forbidden.  The  dead  are 
to  be  more  carefully  buried.  The  Bab  even  tried  to  in- 
troduce a  new  form  of  handwriting,  which,  however,  has 
fortunately  not  been  generally  adopted.  It  is  difficult  to 
determine  whether  there  are  in  the  teaching  of  the  Bab  any 
germs  of  social  and  religious  progress  in  Persia.  At  any  rate, 
his  followers  are  more  tolerant  of  other  religions,  especially  of 
Christianity.     The  Bible  as  well  as  the  Koran  is  supplanted 


Persia  289 

by  the  Beyan  of  the  Bab,  yet  it  is  regarded  as  an  interesting 
lesson  in  the  progress  of  mankind  to  read  the  records  of  both 
those  revelations,  comparing  them  with  the  more  perfect 
revelation  of  the  Beyan.  The  reading  of  the  Bible  is,  there- 
fore, recommended.  The  question  has  been  debated,  whether 
Babisra  is  an  Islamic  sect,  or  whether,  banished  from  Islam,  it 
has  grown  to  be  a  new  religion.  Its  principles,  at  least, 
provided  the  possibility  of  a  religious  development  in  advance 
of  Islam,  and  Beha,  the  successor  of  the  Bab,  has  invented  a 
kind  of  universal  religion.  While  the  Bab,  still  a  youth,  was 
working  out  his  ideas,  a  tragic  fate  overtook  him.  He  was 
banished  first  to  Maku,  a  remote  little  town  on  the  furthest 
northwestern  boundary  of  Persia,  whence  he  was  dragged 
in  1850  to  Tabriz  to  be  barbarously  executed.  He  had  not 
yet  reached  his  thirtieth  year.  Though  the  leader  had 
languished  in  prison  and  had  met  with  a  shameful  death, 
Babism  now  spread  rapidly.  People  of  all  grades  of  society, 
even  the  highest  and  best  educated,  became  his  followers, 
being  called  Babists.  Even  in  the  first  generation  there  were 
such  prominent  men  as  Mollah  Husein,  the  hadji,  Mollah 
Muhammad  Ali,  and  Mollah  Muhammad  Ali  of  Zangin, 
noted  for  his  learning  and  piety.  Above  all,  there  was 
Zerrin  Taj  (Golden  Crown),  a  woman  of  surpassing  intellect. 
Filled  with  enthusiasm,  the  Babists  called  her  Qurrat  ul 
Ain  (Lustre  of  the  Eye).  She  had  a  most  attractive  person- 
ality, doubly  striking  by  contrast  with  her  countrywomen  of 
the  Persian  harems. 

The  Persian  government  foolishly  assumed  from  the  very 
beginning  a  hostile  attitude  towards  Babism,  endeavouring  to 
exterminate  it  with  fire  and  sword.  Seeing  their  influence 
threatened,  and  angered  by  the  sharp  criticisms  of  the  Bab 
and  his  followers,  the  mollahs  and  the  mujtahids,  the  superior 
clergy  of  the  Shiites,  urged  on  the  temporal  power.  Thus  a 
terrible  war  of  extermination  began  to  be  waged  against 
Babism.  Barely  four  years  after  Ali  Muhammad  first  ap- 
peared as  Bab  in  Shiraz,  a  band  of  his  followers  in  a  remote 
part  of   the  country,  led  by  Mollah  Husein,  defended  the 


290     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

mountain  fastness  of  Sheikh  Tebersi,  in  the  province  of 
Mazandaran,  against  a  superior  force  of  government  troops, 
the  siege  ending  after  four  months  in  the  extermination  of 
the  faithful  defenders.  A  year  later  an  extremely  bloody 
and  bitter  civil  war  broke  out  in  the  town  of  Zangin,  under 
the  leadership  of  the  Babist  Mollah  Muhammad  Ali.  This 
contest  also  ended  in  the  extermination  of  the  Babist  com- 
munity there.  The  severest  blow  was  struck  by  the  Persian 
government  in  1852.  Three  fanatical  Babists,  probably  with- 
out any  authority,  and  even  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
leader  of  the  movement,  committed  a  murderous  assault  on 
the  shah,  Nasir-ud-Din.  All  the  Babists  had  to  pay  the 
penalty  ;  they  were  to  be  exterminated  root  and  branch.  As 
many  of  them  as  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  government  were 
condemned  to  death,  and  were  executed  with  the  cruelties 
that  only  oriental  bloodthirstiness  can  devise.  Blood  flowed 
in  streams.  But  if  the  government  thought  that  Babism 
could  be  thus  crushed,  it  made  a  great  mistake.  The  move- 
ment grew,  and  the  Babists  went  to  their  death  with  the  joy- 
ousness  of  martyrs.  Only  one  of  them  is  known  to  have 
denied  his  faith  when  threatened  with  death ;  as  soon  as  the 
danger  was  past  he  repented  bitterly  of  his  apostasy,  and  two 
years  later  proved  the  sincerity  of  his  repentance  by  suffer- 
ing a  still  more  cruel  martyrdom.  Even  Christians  must 
wonder,  when  they  behold  the  heroic  faith  and  the  triumphant 
death  of  these  Babists.  Singing  "  From  God  we  came,  to  God 
we  return,"  they  faced  the  most  shameful  and  agonizing  death, 
without  the  trembling  of  an  eyelid. 

Meanwhile  the  movement  was  undergoing  a  rapid  inner 
development.  Ali  Muhammad  had,  before  his  death,  solemnly 
appointed  as  his  successor  a  disciple  of  his,  Mirza  Yahya,  with 
the  title  of  Hazret-i-Ezel  (His  Highness  the  Eternal)  or  Subh-i- 
Ezel  (Dawn  of  Eternity).  Yahya  withdrew  to  Bagdad  in 
order  to  escape  the  pursuit  of  the  Persian  government.  But 
the  latter,  remembering  the  attempt  of  1852,  was  suspicious 
of  such  a  man  so  near  to  the  boundary,  and  induced  the  Sultan 
to  confine  both  him  and  his  followers.    They  were,  accord- 


Persia  291 

ingly,  placed  under  police  supervision  as  political  prisoners, 
first  in  Constantinople,  later  in  Adrianople,  and  finally  in 
Acca  in  Syria.  Mirza  Yahya  was  of  a  retiring  disposition, 
not  a  man  of  action.  His  elder  half-brother,  Mirza  Husein 
Ali,  better  known  under  the  name  of  Beha  Ullah  (Beauty  of 
God),  became  the  real  leader  of  the  movement.  It  was  not 
long  before  this  talented  and  versatile  man  discovered  that  he 
was  the  imam  predicted  by  the  Bab,  "  whom  Allah  would 
render  visible,"  the  imam  of  the  succeeding  generation,  who 
was  called  to  supplant  the  revelation  imparted  by  the  Bab 
with  a  newer  and  still  more  advanced  revelation.  In  his 
great  work,  "  Ikan  "  (certainty),  which  he  had  written  while 
still  in  Bagdad,  he  endeavoured  to  prove  in  a  really  masterly 
way,  from  the  Bible  and  the  Koran,  the  truth  of  the  teaching 
of  Babism  in  general.  In  later  works  he  openly  advanced  his 
claims  to  the  prophetic  office.  And,  however  much  Mirza 
Yahya  resisted  these  claims,  the  more  energetic  and  logical 
Beha  gained  the  upper  hand.  By  far  the  greater  number  of 
the  Babists  attached  themselves  to  him,  and  he  managed,  even 
in  imprisonment  in  Acca,  by  means  of  an  extensive  correspond- 
ence, to  retain  the  leadership  until  his  death  on  the  16th  of 
May,  1892.  Since  then  his  son,  Abbas  Effendi,  has  been  the 
leader  of  the  movement. 

In  1896  the  attention  of  Europe  was  widely  attracted  to  the 
Babists  once  more  when,  on  May  1st  of  that  year.  Shah 
Nasir-ud-Din  was  shot  by  a  fanatical  Babist  as  he  was  enter- 
ing the  mosque  in  Teheran.  Connected  with  this  deed  were 
many  dangerous  political  intrigues,  especially  that  of  a  re- 
vengeful adventurer,  Jamal-ud-Din.  The  murder  of  the  shah, 
an  act  of  vengeance  for  the  cruel  and  bloody  persecution  of 
the  Babists,  was  punished  by  similar  persecutions.  But  relig- 
ious movements  cannot  be  exterminated  by  means  of  the 
sword  and  the  gallows.  It  is  estimated  that  fully  one  million 
of  the  7,500,000  inhabitants  of  Persia  are  at  the  present  day 
Babists.  Bloody  persecutions  have  again  burst  over  them  of 
late  years,  for  instance,  in  1903  in  Yezd  ;  but  the  Babists  meet 
death  as  defiantly  as  ever. 


292     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

{d)  Aside  from  the  Shiite  Persians,  the  Syrians  or  Kes- 
torians  in  the  northwestern  province  of  Azerbaijan  chiefly 
claim  our  attention.  They  dwell  partly  in  the  plains  to  the 
west  of  Lake  Urumiah,  partly  in  the  neighbouring  mountainous 
region  of  Kurdistan.  Lake  Urumiah  is  about  eighty  miles  long 
and  thirty  miles  wide ;  its  water  is  so  saline  and  bituminous 
that  fish  cannot  live  in  it,  but  on  its  shores  there  are  number- 
less aquatic  birds,  especially  flocks  of  beautiful  flamingoes. 
To  the  west  of  the  lake  there  is  a  wonderfully  beautiful  and 
fertile  plain,  which  rises  gradually  towards  the  mountains  and 
is  called  "  Persia's  paradise."  On  it  lie  more  than  three  hun- 
dred villages  and  hamlets,  nestling  among  fields,  gardens  and 
vineyards.  Numerous  streams  rush  down  from  the  mountains 
to  the  lake,  their  banks  lined  with  willows,  poplars  and  fig- 
trees.  The  plain  has  almost  the  appearance  of  a  great  forest, 
with  its  plantations  of  peaches,  apricots,  pears,  plums  and 
other  fruit-trees.  In  the  midst  of  the  orchard-land  lies  the 
town  of  Urumiah,  situated  on  a  height  some  four  hundred  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  lake.  It  is  the  reputed  birthplace  of 
Zoroaster.  Towards  the  west  rise  the  bare  mountains,  wild 
and  menacing.  The  lake  itself  lies  4,100  feet  above  sea-level, 
and  the  hills  quickly  attain  a  height  of  12,000  feet  above  the 
sea,  an  Alpine  range  looking  down  from  its  snow-covered 
summits  upon  the  plain  at  its  feet.  We  enter  upon  a  wild 
and  rugged  wilderness  of  mountains,  full  of  deep  gorges  and 
valleys,  with  wild  torrents  rushing  over  mighty  blocks  of 
stone.  Higher  and  higher  rise  the  chains  up  to  14,000  feet 
and  more.  There  is  no  proper  road  over  this  wilderness  of 
rocks.  The  isolated  valleys,  or  valley  systems,  are  separated 
from  one  another  as  by  walls.  Everywhere  there  are  inac- 
cessible cliffs,  deep  hollows,  precipitous  rocks,  affording  a  last 
refuge  to  the  pursued.  For  whole  days  the  traveller  passes 
through  this  paradise  of  bandits,  until  he  sees,  stretched  out 
like  a  map  before  him,  the  wide-spreading  plain  of  Mesopo- 
tamia. In  this  wild,  pathless  mountain  region  ISTestorians 
have  their  homes  in  about  three  hundred  villages  hidden  away 
in  twenty-five  upland  valleys.     Unfortunately  they  are  split 


Persia  293 

up  into  many  tribes,  each  of  which  jealously  guards  its  own 
rights.  The  patriarch,  who  lives  in  Kotchhannes  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Julamerk  on  the  Zavi,  in  one  of  the  wildest 
valleys,  is  at  once  their  religious  and  their  secular  head. 
Until  the  year  1843  the  Nestorians  maintained  their  inde- 
pendence against  the  hordes  of  Kurds,  which  surrounded  and 
threatened  them.  In  that  year  the  powerful  Kurdish  chiefs, 
Nurallah  Bey  and  Bedr  Khan,  entered  into  an  alliance  with 
Turkey.  While  the  Nestorians  were  quarrelling  with  one 
another,  the  Kurds  fell  with  fearful  ferocity  upon  their 
defenseless  opponents,  taking  possession  of  valley  after  valley, 
and  fortress  after  fortress,  and  slaughtering  11,000  Nestorians 
in  the  space  of  a  few  weeks.  With  that  the  independence 
of  the  Nestorians  was  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  there  has  been 
imposed  on  them  by  the  Turks  a  hea.Yj  burden  of  taxation, 
the  amount  of  which  is  being  raised  from  year  to  year.  When 
one  looks  at  their  homes  among  the  rocks  and  at  the  tiny 
fields,  one  wonders  how  they  can  pay  any  taxes  at  all.  In 
order  to  do  so  they  sell  their  sheep  and  mules  at  less  than 
their  value,  and  when  they  have  nothing  left,  they  either  emi- 
grate or  starve.  There  is  but  one  explanation  of  this  senseless 
treatment  by  the  Turks ;  they  want  to  ruin  their  Christian 
subjects.  And  this  they  are  fast  accomplishing.  Compared 
with  these  Nestorians  of  the  mountains  the  25,000  living  in 
the  plain  of  Urumiah  have  an  easy  time.  They  are,  indeed, 
heavily  taxed  by  the  Persian  officials,  but  they  are  able  to 
hold  their  own,  though  they  are,  almost  without  exception, 
poor.  Any  one  possessing  property  of  the  value  of  £100  is 
considered  a  rich  man. 

Ever  since  the  Syrians  adopted  ISTestorius'  doctrine  of  the 
dual  nature,  there  has  been  no  further  development  in  their 
theology.  This  may  be  attributed  partly  to  the  Syrian 
character,  which,  though  impulsive  in  new  undertakings, 
and  often  powerful  in  carrying  them  out,  is  not  construct- 
ive either  in  theology  or  ecclesiastical  organization.  An- 
other reason  is  probably  that  this  Church  was  com- 
pelled to  fight  for  its  existence,  not  against  heresies,  but 


294     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

against  Islam  and  heathenism.  In  their  literature  we  find 
different  views  on  most  doctrinal  questions,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  dogmas  of  the  dual  nature  and  of  the  inspiration 
of  the  Bible.  Thus  transubstantiation  is  both  defended  and 
attacked.  There  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  general  practical 
tendency  to  lay  stress  on  simple  faith  in  the  crucified  and 
risen  Saviour.  Even  greater  importance  is  attached  to  works 
of  the  law.  Fasts  hold  the  largest  place  in  their  ecclesiastical 
life,  though  vows  and  pilgrimages  are  almost  equally  im- 
portant. The  priests  are  regarded  as  successors  of  the  Levit- 
ical  priesthood.  They  are,  however,  not  ordinarily  called 
priests,  but  go  by  the  name  of  hasha,  that  is,  elder,  presbyter. 
Unfortunately  for  the  Syrian  Church,  Russia,  the  nearest 
Christian  country,  has  proved,  especially  in  the  last  half  cen- 
tury, an  attraction  not  only  to  honest  labouring  men,  but  also 
to  the  priests,  who  make  tours  among  the  superstitious  peas- 
ants of  Southern  Russia,  and,  under  the  pretense  of  collecting 
money  for  some  church,  saint's  shrine,  or  miracle-working 
image,  receive  thousands  of  rubles,  which  they  afterwards 
squander  in  riotous  living.  In  Russia  they  appear  in  the  guise 
of  piety,  but  they  come  home  as  godless  mockers.  The  or- 
daining of  such  men  as  "  priests  "  or  "  deacons,"  before  they 
set  out  upon  their  predatory  excursions,  is  a  chief  source  of 
income  of  the  bishops,  the  high  fees  charged  for  ordination 
being  willingly  paid,  since  the  title  of  priest  pays  so  well. 
The  opening  up  of  Western  Persia  has  enabled  these  itinerant 
beggars  to  extend  their  collecting  tours  far  and  wide  over  the 
Christian  world. 

Peotestant  Missions  in  Persia 
1.     The  worh  of  the  American  Board,^  1834,-1870 
The  American  Board  began  its  work  in  Persia  among  the 
small,  courageous  Syrian  people,  and  there  it  continued  to 

'Perkins,  "Missionary  Life  in  Persia."  Shedd,  "Islam  and  the  Oriental 
Churches."  Jewett,  "Twenty-five  Years  in  Persia."  Marsh,  "  A  Tennessean 
in  Persia."  Biographies  of  Stoddard,  Lobdell,  Rhea,  and  of  Fidelia  Fiske 
("  Woman  and  her  Saviour  in  Persia;  "  "  Faith  Working  in  Love  "). 


Persia  295 

have  its  chief  work  in  this  country  for  half  a  century.  It  was 
a  revelation  to  the  Christianity  of  the  West  when,  in  1830, 
the  American  missionaries,  Smith  and  D wight,  after  visiting 
the  Nestorians,  gave  their  experiences  to  the  world  in  their 
book,  "  Christian  Researches  in  Armenia "  (Boston,  1833). 
They  had  found  the  JS'estorians  in  a  state  of  deep  intellectual 
and  spiritual  degradation.  There  were  among  them  not  more 
than  twenty  or  thirty  men,  and  only  one  woman,  able  to  read. 
There  were  no  printed  books,  but  only  here  and  there  written 
portions  of  the  Bible,  and  nowhere  a  complete  Bible  even  in 
writing.  The  language  of  public  worship  was  exclusively 
Ancient  Syriac,  which  hardly  half  a  dozen  of  the  priests  them- 
selves understood.  There  was  no  preaching  at  all.  The 
mother  tongue  of  the  Nestorians  is  Modern  Syriac,  which, 
though  not  a  development  of  the  Ancient  Syriac  of  the 
Peshito,  is  yet  an  almost  pure  dialect  of  Aramaic,  the  only  re- 
maining branch  of  the  ancient  Aramaic- Syriac  family  of  lan- 
guages. But  this  rough  dialect  was  not  as  yet  a  written  lan- 
guage, and  had  never  been  scientifically  studied.  This  de- 
pressingly  low  intellectual  condition  was  the  more  surprising 
since  the  Roman  Catholics  had  succeeded,  by  craft  and  in- 
trigue, in  effecting  the  ecclesiastical  subjection  of  the  Nesto- 
rians,  particularly  of  those  living  to  the  west,  on  the  Mesopo- 
tamian  side  of  the  mountains.  But  they  had  done  little  either 
for  the  religious  improvement  or  for  the  intellectual  elevation 
of  the  people.  Yet  the  Westorians  are  distinguished  above 
all  other  Oriental  Churches  by  the  childlike  confidence  with 
which  they  received  the  missionaries,  and  by  their  often 
touching  eagerness  to  acquire  knowledge.  They  felt  intensely 
their  degraded  and  neglected  condition,  and  joyfully  welcomed 
the  missionaries  as  their  helpers  and  instructors. 

It  was  in  the  year  1834  that  the  first  American  missionary, 
the  Rev.  Justin  Perkins,  D.  D.,  arrived  in  Urumiah.  Dr.  A. 
Grant,  a  physician,  followed  him  in  1835.  Further  help  was 
soon  sent,  and,  compared  with  the  other  missions  of  this  so- 
ciety, the  mission  in  Persia  was  extraordinarily  soon  under 
way.     In  1836  a  "  seminary  "  was  opened.     This  was  a  board- 


296     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

ing-school  for  boys,  and  was  for  decades  the  centre  of  educa- 
tional work  among  men.  In  1838  a  seminary  for  girls  was 
added,  at  first  only  as  a  day-school  and  on  a  very  simple  scale ; 
but,  on  the  coming  of  Fidelia  Fiske,  a  niece  of  Pliny  Fiske, 
the  pioneer  missionary  in  Syria,  oriental  prejudices  were  de- 
fied, an  attempt  being  made  to  turn  the  institution  into  a 
boarding-school,  and,  in  a  few  years,  the  attempt  was  crowned 
with  success.  Then,  in  1837,  a  printing-press  arrived  in 
Trebizond,  on  its  way  to  Urumiah ;  since  it  proved,  however,  to 
be  too  heavy  and  large  for  transport  over  the  mountains,  the 
Board  sent  another  more  suitable  press  in  1839,  and  also  an 
experienced  compositor,  who,  following  Dr.  Perkins'  instruc- 
tions, and  making  use  of  the  characters  which  he  supplied, 
founded  suitable  type,  with  which  he  at  once  began  to  print. 
Dr.  Grant  worked  up  in  a  very  short  time  such  a  large  prac- 
tice that  he  could  scarcely  manage  it.  Five  years  after  the 
arrival  of  the  first  missionaries,  the  work  was  thus  in  full 
operation.  It  is  true  that,  for  a  time,  the  missionaries  made 
use  of  small  contrivances  which  would  have  been  unnecessary 
had  their  missionary  experience  been  greater.  Thus  the 
pupils  of  the  lower  grades  received  sixpence  as  a  reward  for 
good  attendance,  and  those  in  the  upper  classes  a  shilling,  un- 
der the  name  of  "  support." 

It  was  particularly  pleasing  that  the  Nestorian  clergy  were 
willing  to  associate  themselves  with  the  missionaries,  who 
thus  almost  at  once  acquired  a  staff  of  helpers,  many  of  whom 
proved  to  be  capable  men.  Among  the  first  of  these  helpers 
were  three  bishops  and  two  priests,  all  but  one  of  whom  lived 
in  the  missionary  settlement.  Among  the  first  students  in 
the  seminary,  there  were  two  bishops,  three  priests  and  four 
deacons,  all,  of  course,  adults,  who  were  making  use  of  this 
opportunity  to  supplement  their  defective  education. 

One  of  the  first  and  most  important  tasks  was  the  transla- 
tion of  the  Bible  into  Modern  Syriac,  after  the  indispensable 
preparatory  work  of  studying  the  language  scientifically  and 
reducing  it  to  a  system  of  writing  had  been  accomplished. 
This  work  was  done  by  Perkins  and  Stoddard.    Dr.  Perkins 


Persia  297 

spent  ten  years  of  his  busy  life  in  translating  the  Bible.  The 
New  Testament  appeared  in  1846  in  an  edition  containing  in 
parallel  columns  the  Ancient  and  the  Modern  Syriac  versions, 
because  of  the  almost  superstitious  popular  veneration  for  the 
language  of  the  Peshito. 

In  connection  with  this  work  of  raising  Modern  Syriac  to  a 
written  language,  and  of  providing  it  with  a  literature, 
it  was  a  great  help  to  the  missionaries  that  Western  ori- 
entalists took  a  lively  interest  in  the  new  language,  and  ren- 
dered much  assistance  in  the  work  of  scientific  study.  The 
division  of  labour  was,  in  general,  this,  that  the  missionaries 
provided  the  manuscripts,  while  the  scholars  undertook  the 
more  scientific  part  of  the  linguistic  work.  Th«  first  Modern 
Syriac  grammar  was  written  by  the  learned  Dr.  Stoddard,  and 
was  entitled,  "  A  Grammar  of  the  Modern  Syriac  Language  " 
(  Journal  of  the  American  Oriental  Society^  Yol.  Y,  1853).  On 
this  was  based  Theodor  Noeldeke's  masterly  "  Grammatik  der 
Neusyrischen  Sprache  "  (Leipsic,  1868).  The  most  prominent 
student  of  Modern  Syriac  at  the  present  day  is  Prof.  A.  M. 
MacLean  of  Oxford,  who  has  published  a  "  Grammar  of  the 
Dialects  of  the  Yernacular  Syriac  "  (Cambridge,  1895),  and  a 
"  Dictionary  of  the  Dialects  of  the  Yernacular  Syriac  "  (Ox- 
ford, 1900).  The  American  missionaries  were  meanwhile  sup- 
plying modern  Christian  literature.  In  addition  to  the  Bible, 
such  books  as  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  and  Baxter's 
"  Saints'  Rest,"  as  well  as  theological  tracts  and  stories,  were 
translated  and  printed.  The  mission  press  was  an  important 
part  of  the  mission.  Between  the  years  1839  and  18Y3, 110,000 
volumes,  with  21,250,000  pages,  were  published ;  and  the 
Syriac  type  used  was,  at  that  time,  the  best  in  existence,  being 
copied  by  the  scholars  of  Europe. 

The  Urumiah  Mission  grew  so  quietly  in  the  first  thirty-five 
years  of  its  existence,  until  18Y0,  that  it  seems  best  to  take  a 
general  survey  of  the  work,  rather  than  to  give  a  history  of 
consecutive  events.  A  threatening  enemy,  against  which  the 
mission  had  ever  to  be  on  the  alert,  was  the  rival  Jesuit  mis- 
sion of  the  Lazarists.     In  1838,  four  years  later  than  the 


298     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Americans,  the  Lazarists  came  to  Persia,  turning  first  to  the 
Armenians  and  Persians  living  in  the  large  towns.  But  here 
they  made  themselves  so  obnoxious  that,  within  two  years, 
they  were  sent  away.  They  thereupon  turned  to  the 
Nestorians,  the  more  readily  since  they  observed  that  the 
Protestant  mission  had  there  gained  ground  quickly. 
Threatened  here  also  with  banishment,  they  succeeded  in. 
holding  their  ground  only  by  appealing  to  the  powerful  aid  of 
the  French  ambassador.  They  were  untiring  in  their  intrigues 
against  the  Americans,  now  inciting  the  Persian  authorities  to 
banish  them,  now  uniting  wath  the  opposing  Nestorian  bishops 
in  counteracting  the  work  of  the  mission,  now  capturing 
churches  by  force  or  by  guile.  More  than  once  the  American 
missionaries  were  compelled  to  undertake  fatiguing  journeys 
at  unfavourable  seasons  of  the  year,  in  order  to  save  the  mis- 
sion from  ruin. 

A  characteristic  feature  of  the  Kestorian  Mission  is  the 
religious  revivals,  which  occurred  two  or  three  times  in  every 
decade,  the  first  of  them  being  in  1836.  The  revivals  usually 
ran  the  same  course.  Beginning  with  the  boys  or  the  girls  in 
the  seminary,  they  spread  thence  throughout  the  town  of 
Urumiah,  and  afterwards  more  or  less  widely  into  the  sur- 
rounding district.  The  village  of  Geogtapa,  especially,  some 
five  miles  south  of  Urumiah,  received  almost  always  its  share  of 
the  blessing.  A  deep  sense  of  sin,  often  touching  earnestness 
in  prayer,  and  an  eager  desire  for  the  Word  of  God  marked 
those  who  were  awakened.  The  missionaries  had  often 
trouble  to  keep  the  excitement  within  bounds.  These  revivals 
widened  the  influence  of  the  mission.  Thus  the  mission 
gradually  extended  its  work  to  the  villages  around  Urumiah, 
one  after  the  other.  The  priests  and  even  the  bishops  them- 
selves were  the  chief  agents.  Branch  schools  were  opened, 
and,  in  as  many  places  as  possible,  Sunday-schools  and  preach- 
ing services  were  inaugurated,  the  missionaries  diligently  en- 
deavouring to  keep  in  touch  with  these  outposts  by  frequent 
visits.  At  first  the  priests  and  deacons  of  the  ancient  faith 
were  gladly  employed,  in  spite  of  their  defective  previous 


Persia  299 

training,  since  through  them  it  was  easier  to  come  into  touch 
with  the  people.  But  gradually  they  were  replaced  as  far  as 
was  possible  by  more  proficient  teachers  and  preachers,  who, 
like  their  wives,  had  been  trained  in  the  seminaries  in 
Urumiah.  At  the  same  time  the  missionaries  carefully  avoided 
doing  anything  that  might  seem  to  interfere  with  the  old 
ecclesiastical  arrangements,  or  that  had  the  appearance  of 
proselytism.  They  were  determined  in  every  possible  way  to 
avoid  a  break  with  the  ancient  Church  and  the  founding  of 
Protestant  congregations.  The  assistants  of  the  missionaries 
continued  to  be  bishops,  priests  and  deacons  of  their  own 
Church.  The  ancient  Syriac  liturgy  was  retained  both  in 
public  worship  and  in  the  administration  of  the  sacra- 
ments. 

The  missionaries,  of  course,  always  insisted  that  there 
should  be  abundant  preaching  of  the  Gospel  in  Modern 
Syriac,  in  addition  to  the  more  or  less  unintelligible  liturgies. 
In  this  way  the  sermon  became  a  new  and  important,  perhaps 
a  predominant,  element  in  the  services  of  those  congregations 
which  came  under  the  influence  of  the  mission.  At  first  the 
Lord's  Supper  was  celebrated  in  Protestant  fashion  only  in 
the  missionary  circle.  Yet  it  could  hardly  give  offense  if 
they  should  admit  into  this  circle  the  more  advanced  Chris- 
tians of  their  acquaintance,  when  specially  requested  to  do  so. 
This  they  began  to  do,  and  there  can  be  no  question  that  such 
earnest  seekers  found  more  edification  and  richer  blessing  in 
these  simple  celebrations  of  the  Lord's  Supper  than  in  the 
overloaded  masses  of  their  ancient  Church.  Very  slowly  the 
mission  took  another  step  in  the  same  direction.  They  would 
admit  to  the  Lord's  Supper  any  who  applied,  on  condition 
that  such  persons,  in  a  previous,  private  interview  with  the 
missionaries,  convinced  the  latter  that  they  were  sufiiciently 
advanced  in  the  evangelical  faith.  Next  they  began  to  ap- 
point regular  days  in  the  villages  in  which  those  who  had 
been  thus  admitted  lived,  on  which  the  Lord's  Supper  was 
celebrated  there  in  the  simple  Protestant  manner.  In  1855  a 
"  Protestant  congregation "  was  established,  with  168  mem- 


300     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

bers,  and  in  1862  a  native  presbytery  was  organized.  Could 
the  ancient  Church  tolerate  within  her  borders  this  foreign  or- 
ganization, which  was  to  a  great  extent  independent  of  her, 
and  was  chiefly  composed  of  pupils  of  the  mission,  or  was 
there  bound  to  be  a  rupture  ? 

A  great  majority  of  the  Nestorians  live,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
the  mountains  of  Kurdistan,  and  especially  in  the  districts  of 
Hakkiari  and  Bohtan,  in  the  high-lying  valleys  of  Tiary, 
Amadia,  and  Gawar,  In  1839  Dr.  Grant,  the  medical  mis- 
sionary, endeavoured  to  establish  friendly  relations  with  these 
Nestorians  and  their  Patriarch.  Several  things  contributed 
to  make  regular  mission  work  in  the  mountains  impossible. 
In  the  first  place,  work  among  these  wild  mountains  meant 
great  fatigue  and  privation.  Then  there  were  the  predatory 
Kurds,  with  whose  friendship  the  missionaries  could  not  dis- 
pense if  their  lives  were  to  be  safe,  and  from  whose  attacks 
one  was  never  secure  even  then.  There  was  also  political  un- 
rest, for  the  Turks  Avere  endeavouring  to  subdue  Kurds  and 
Nestorians  alike,  playing  the  one  against  the  other  most  skill- 
fully. Above  all,  there  was  the  ever-shifting  policy  of  suc- 
cessive patriarchs,  who  were  politicians  rather  than  religious 
leaders,  and  who,  as  such,  were  ever  ready  to  favour  those  who 
could  best  protect  them  against  the  Turks  and  Kurds.  After 
twenty  years  of  romantic  adventures  and  of  hardships,  to 
which  the  untiring  pioneer,  Dr.  Grant,  and  several  of  his  suc- 
cessors succumbed,  the  missionaries  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  gain  a  permanent  footing 
in  the  mountains.  They  altered  their  plans,  and,  instead  of 
sacrificing  any  more  precious  lives,  employed  native  helpers  as 
much  as  possible  in  that  region,  the  missionaries  paying  occa- 
sional visits,  and'regular  reports  being  sent  to  Urumiah.  This 
was  merely  a  makeshift,  especially  when  one  remembers  that 
it  was  in  the  mountains  that  the  chief  strength  of  the  Syrian 
population  lay.  And  the  missionaries  were  compelled  at  last 
to  recognize  the  painful  fact  that  they  had  not  been  successful 
in  exercising  any  powerful  influence  on  the  mountain  Nes- 
torians,  either  as  a  Church  or  as  a  nation,  and  that  they  would 


Persia 


301 


probably  continue  to  be  unsuccessful  in  the  future.  Their 
failure  was  partly  due  to  the  all  too  great  difference  between 
this  democratic  mission,  and  that  rigid  national  Church,  with 
its  hierarchical  institutions.  A  still  more  powerful  cause  of 
that  failure  was  the  tangle  of  secular  and  religious  interests, 
which  proved  here,  as  among  the  other  Oriental  Churches,  to 
be  a  check  on  efforts  at  reform.  Since  the  Patriarch  and  his  as- 
sociates aimed  chiefly  at  preserving  the  inherited  independence 
of  the  nation,  they  considered  the  religious  question  to  be  of 
secondary  importance,  and  consequently  judged  all  religious 
agencies  according  to  their  ability  to  aid  in  gaining  or  retain- 
ing political  power.  Hand  in  hand  with  this  was  the  obstinate 
oriental  conservatism,  which  holds  fast  to  anything  ancient, 
however  foolish  it  may  be ;  they  clung  to  their  unintelligible 
Ancient  Syriac  liturgy,  to  the  equally  unintelligible  Ancient 
Syriac  Bible,  to  sacramental  errors  in  doctrine  and  practice, 
to  veneration  of  the  saints  and  to  strict  fasting.  Against  all 
this  neither  evangelical  knowledge  nor  evangelical  liberty 
could  contend. 

A  brief  account  must  be  given  of  some  of  the  missionaries 
and  Syrian  helpers  belonging  to  this  period. 

The  founder  of  the  mission  of  the  American  Board  in  Per- 
sia, the  Rev.  Dr.  Perkins,^  was  the  soul  of  the  work  in  Urumiah 
for  thirty-five  years,  until  his  death  in  1869.  His  greatest 
service  was  the  literary  work  he  did.  In  addition  to  his  use- 
ful translation  of  the  Bible,  he  prepared  other  books  in  Modern 
Syriac,  e.  g.,  commentaries  on  Genesis  and  Daniel.  We  have 
already  mentioned  one  of  his  colleagues,  Dr.  Asahel  Grant,^ 
a  pioneer  among  the  mountain  Nestorians.  He  was  a  coura- 
geous man,  calm  but  firm.  His  great  medical  skill,  his  utter 
devotion  to  his  Saviour,  his  tactfulness,  won  him  the  confidence 
even  of  men  who  did  not  trust  one  another.  His  fearlessness 
even  in  the  greatest  dangers,  the  calm  ascendency  which  he 
exercised  over  the  bandits,  and  his  unswerving  faith  amidst 

*  Justin  Perkins,  "A  Residence  of  Eight  Years  in  Persia  Among  the  Nesto- 
rians,"  New  York,  1893.     "  Life  of  Dr.  Justin  Perkins." 
«  Grant,  "The  Nestoriana  the  Lost  Tribes,"  London,  1893. 


302     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

painful  disappointments,  enabled  him  to  prosecute  his  life's 
work  in  the  dreary,  bandit-haunted  mountains. 

Between  1840  and  1860  there  were  two  noteworthy  mission- 
aries in  Urumiah,  Dr.  Stoddard  and  Fidelia  Fiske.  Both  were 
of  a  deep  and  ardent  piety.  It  was  their  glowing  love  to  the 
Saviour  that  lit  the  fire  of  the  revivals  in  the  two  seminaries 
which  they  superintended. 

Stoddard  was  slight  of  build,  and  of  an  almost  feminine 
gracefulness,  resembling  what  we  are  wont  to  think  must  have 
been  the  appearance  of  the  Beloved  Disciple.  Having  once 
devoted  himself  to  the  service  of  the  mission,  he  put  his  whole 
soul  into  it.  People  in  America  and  Persia  who  came  into 
contact  with  him  received  the  impression,  thus  described  by  a 
theological  professor  from  America : — "  He  passes  through  the 
churches  like  a  flaming  Seraph.  So  heavenly-minded  a  spirit 
is  seldom  met  with  in  our  country." 

Fidelia  Fiske  was  only  fifteen  years  in  Urumiah  (1843-1858), 
being  all  that  time  at  the  head  of  the  seminary  for  girls,  upon 
which  she  left  so  strong  a  mark  that,  to  the  present  day,  it 
goes  by  the  name  of  the  "  Fidelia  Fiske  Seminary."  Few 
missionaries  in  Persia  have  had  the  joy  of  leading  so  many 
souls  to  the  Saviour. 

Of  the  Syrian  helpers  in  the  mission  we  shall  mention  only 
two.  Bishop  Elias  died  in  December,  1863,  aged  more  than 
eighty  years.  He  had  always  been  a  man  of  deep  piety,  with 
an  earnest  longing  for  salvation.  Although  he  was  already 
fifty  years  old  when  the  missionaries  came,  he  welcomed  them 
with  joy,  and  at  once  allied  himself  with  them,  trusting  them 
implicitly  as  true  servants  of  his  God.  He  was  a  thoroughly 
honest  and  simple-minded  man,  loving  the  Bible  ardently,  and 
having  it  ever  with  him.  His  last  exhortation  to  those  who 
gathered  round  his  death-bed  was,  "  Children,  hold  fast  to  the 
"Word  of  God  !  "  He  was  a  bright  example  of  how  useful  a 
worker  a  Nestorian  may  be.  Barely  a  year  later,  in  the  autumn 
of  1864,  Deacon  Isaac  died.  Had  you  seen  him  in  his  simple 
clothing,  and  with  his  modest  manner,  you  would  not  have 
thought  that  he  belonged  to  the  highest  nobility  of  his  coun- 


Persia  303 

try,  nor  that  he  had  in  his  youth  often  fought  against  Kurdish 
bandits.  He  was  a  brother  of  the  Patriarch,  and  it  was  pain- 
ful to  him  that  the  latter  proved  to  be  so  unreliable,  and  that 
he  held  more  and  more  aloof  from  the  mission,  even  putting 
obstacles  in  its  way.  Yet  the  Patriarch's  family  was  proud 
of  Isaac.  Though  he  had  been  brought  up  in  a  society  in 
which  even  nobles  did  not  blush  when  caught  telling  a  lie,  his 
word  could  be  implicitly  believed.  People  seeking  redress  of 
wrongs  crowded  his  courtyard,  knowing  that  he  would  pro- 
nounce judgment  without  respect  of  persons,  and  would  take 
neither  payment  nor  present,  though  all  around  him  were 
open  to  bribery.  While  his  countrymen  treated  their  wives 
with  deliberate  contempt,  he  held  his  faithful  wife  Martha  in 
high  respect,  and  they  led  together  an  exemplary  married  life. 
At  the  same  time  he  was  by  nature  of  a  proud  and  passionate 
disposition.  When  once  a  French  Lazarist  offended  him,  he 
sprang  up  in  wrath,  and  grasped  the  sword  at  his  side ;  but 
from  that  day  he  carried  his  sword  no  more. 


2.     The    American  Presbyterian   Mission  among  the  Nes- 
torians^  1870-1908 

Like  the  mission  in  Syria  (Chapter  lY,  A,  3),  the  Persian 
Mission  was  transferred  by  the  American  Board  in  the  autumn 
of  1870  to  the  American  Presbyterians.  The  second  period 
in  the  history  of  the  mission  in  Persia  now  began.  A  wider 
work  than  that  in  Urumiah  was  at  once  undertaken,  but  we  will 
first  follow  the  development  of  the  Urumiah  Mission.  When 
the  Presbyterians  took  over  the  mission  work  here,  they  found 
about  700  people  who  attended  the  Protestant  celebration  of 
the  communion,  and  about  960  children  in  the  schools.  IS"© 
official  separation  from  the  Nestorian  Church  had  yet  been 
effected,  the  leading  missionary,  Justin  Perkins,  having  been 
decidedly  opposed  to  this  step  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  in 

'S.  G.  Wilson,  "Persia,  the  Western  Mission  "  ;  Kev.  James Bassett,  "Persia, 
the  Eastern  Mission";  Wishard,  "  Twenty-five  Years  in  Persia '';  Wilson, 
"Persian  Life  and  Customs  "  ;  Bassett,  "  The  Land  of  the  Imams." 


304     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

1869.  But  it  was  now  recognized  that  separation  was  una- 
voidable, and  the  Protestants  were  organized  into  the  "  Ke- 
formed  Nestorian  Church."  It  was  by  no  means  with  a  light 
heart  that  this  step  was  taken,  but  a  conviction  had  grown 
that  the  organization  of  the  ancient  Church  could  not  be 
thoroughly  reformed  in  the  evangelical  spirit ;  that  its  services 
could  not  be  adapted  to  modern  needs ;  that  there  would  ever 
be  a  remnant  of  the  old  half-heathenish  leaven.  Yet,  even  up 
to  the  time  of  the  Kussian  invasion,  of  which  we  shall  speak 
later,  opinions  differed  among  the  missionaries  themselves  as 
to  whether  a  rupture  was  absolutely  unavoidable,  and  whether 
a  new,  completely  independent  Church  would  be  altogether 
an  advantage.  Since  the  large  secessions  to  the  Kussian 
Church,  such  doubts  have  been  laid  to  rest.  Facts  have  proved 
that  the  Presbyterians  acted  rightly.  As  everywhere  in  the 
Near  East,  the  establishment  of  a  new  Church  involved  im- 
mense difficulties  of  organization,  which  only  decades  could 
overcome.  The  influence  of  the  American  Mission  was  strong 
only  among  the  25,000  Nestorians  living  on  Persian  territory. 
But  even  in  this  district  there  were  hardly  any  accessions  of 
whole  villages  or  families ;  for  the  most  part  only  individuals, 
of  whom  more  than  half  were  women,  joined  the  new  Church. 
And  the  number  grew  but  slowly.  According  to  the  statis- 
tics given  in  the  Mission  Eeport  of  1907,  there  were  at  that 
time  in  the  "  Eeformed  Church  "  2,658  communicants,  belong- 
ing to  961  families,  thirty-eight  per  cent,  being  men,  and  sixty- 
two  per  cent,  women.  The  adherents  numbered  about  5,000, 
3,770  adults  and  3,180  children  attending  the  Sunday  services. 
These  live  for  the  most  part  in  Urumiah  and  the  villages  of  the 
Urumiah  plain,  though  a  few  come  from  the  adjacent  plains  of 
Salmas  in  the  north  and  Sulduz  in  the  south,  and  from  the 
valleys  of  the  Kurd  mountains,  Beranduz,  Tergawar,  Marga- 
war  and  others.  There  were  a  few  good-sized  congregations, 
in  Geogtapa,  Gulpashan,  Degala,  Charigushi,  Charbash,  all  in 
the  Urumiah  plain ;  and  also  smaller  groups  of  Protestants,  or 
even  single  individuals,  living  scattered  over  the  country. 
It  was  difficult  to  provide  pastoral  care  for  all  these  Prot- 


Persia 


305: 


estants.  Having  been  accustomed,  as  Nestorians,  to  a  more 
than  abundant  supply  of  clergymen,  both  of  superior  and  of 
inferior  rank,  each  little  group  of  Protestants  now  wanted  its 
own  ordained  minister.  But,  as  they  had  not  been  in  the 
habit  of  paying  their  Nestorian  ministers  regular  salaries,  it 
was  hard  to  induce  them  to  provide  salaries,  however  small, 
for  their  Protestant  ministers.  The  Board  attacked  the  prob- 
lem at  first  by  dividing  the  country  of  the  Nestorians  in  Persia 
into  fifty  districts,  each  containing  500  members,  and  by  doing 
its  best  to  provide  each  of  these  districts  with  a  minister.  In 
accordance  with  this  scheme  thirty-five  such  ministers  were 
actually  appointed.  Thus  they  brought  the  entire  l^estorian 
Church  in  Persia  within  the  sound  and  under  the  influence 
of  the  Gospel ;  and,  when  they  had,  in  addition,  founded  their 
village  schools,  of  which  there  were  at  times  as  many  as 
sixty-three,  with  1,666  pupils,  it  might  have  been  supposed 
that  they  had  made  ample  provision  for  the  evangelization  of 
that  part  of  Persia.  Yet  this  extensive  plan  had  its  serious 
drawbacks.  It  was  really  a  missionary  organization  adapted 
to  reach  the  entire  Nestorian  people,  rather  than  a  church  and 
school  system  for  the  Protestants.  And  the  Protestants  could 
not  be  made  to  feel  financial  responsibility  for  carrying  out  a 
plan  which  so  far  exceeded  their  own  needs,  particularly  as, 
up  to  that  time,  a  generous  supply  of  money  had  come  from 
America.  Besides,  the  people  were  too  poor  to  have  main- 
tained such  an  extensive  organization,  even  had  they  wished 
to  do  so.  The  Presbyterians,  however,  as  is  well  known, 
attach  great  importance  to  the  placing  of  their  congregations 
on  an  independent  ecclesiastical  and  financial  basis. 

A  change  wis  therefore  made  ;  it  was  decided  to  limit  the 
organization  to  the  needs  of  the  existing  congregations.  This 
was  a  difficult  matter.  The  grouping  of  four  or  five  villages 
into  a  parish  was  often  frustrated  by  the  childish  insistence  of 
each  village  upon  having  its  own  minister.  And,  in  localities 
where  the  members  were  widely  scattered,  it  was  impossible 
to  form  parishes  small  enough  to  be  cared  for  by  a  single  pastor, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  containing  members  enough  to  be  able 


3o6     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

to  pay  the  minister's  salary.  To  the  present  day  two-thirds 
of  the  expenses  of  maintaining  the  churches,  and  three-fourths 
of  the  salaries  paid  to  the  ministers  are  supplied  from 
America. 

Urumiah  continued  to  be  the  main  station,  other  stations 
being  only  temporarily  occupied.  All  the  chief  institutions  of 
the  mission  are  in  Urumiah.  The  schools  for  girls  are,  in  the 
main,  still  conducted  along  the  lines  marked  out  by  the  Amer- 
ican Board.  The  Fidelia  Fiske  Seminary  is,  as  formerly,  the 
crown  of  the  system.  In  the  system  of  education  for  boys 
considerable  changes  were  made.  We  have  seen  that  the 
American  Board  early  founded  a  "  seminary "  for  boys. 
This  seminary  was  intended  to  be  a  school  for  the  training  of 
catechists,  of  whom  a  large  number  were  needed,  since  the 
mission  felt  that  the  best  plan  for  exercising  a  deep  influence 
on  the  Nestorian  Church  was  to  train  two  boys  out  of  each 
village,  in  Urumiah,  at  the  expense  of  the  mission,  and  then  to 
send  them  back  home  to  act  as  paid  helpers.  But  this  plan 
failed,  since  most  of  those  who  were  thus  pressed  into  mission 
service  were  unfitted  for  such  work  by  reason  of  their  lack  of 
spirituality.  The  plan  was  therefore  discontinued  by  the 
Presbyterians.  After  making  for  ten  years  various  changes 
in  the  boys'  seminary,  they  raised  it  to  the  status  of  a  college 
with  three  parallel  courses,  an  arts  course,  a  divinity  course, 
and  a  medical  course.  There  are  not  always  students  in  the 
latter  two  courses.  In  this  form  the  college  has  become  an 
important  institution  for  the  entire  ITestorian  people,  who  can 
nowhere  else  find  an  education  so  good  as  is  here  available. 
As  the  Syrians  in  general  are  intelligent,  and  hungry  for  edu- 
cation, the  college  has  been  well  attended.  Between  1878  and 
1896,  one  hundred  and  ten  students  passed  the  final  examina- 
tion, thirty-six  of  whom,  it  is  pleasant  to  report,  entered  the 
service  of  the  mission.  Here  again,  however,  a  peculiar  difii- 
culty,  common  in  the  Near  East,  presented  itself.  Since 
Christians  are  excluded  from  the  service  of  the  state,  and 
from  the  most  lucrative  professions,  such  students  as  did  not 
enter  the  service  of  the  mission  were  practically  forced  to 


Persia 


307 


emigrate.  And  such  emigration  was  the  easier  because  of  the 
valuable  knowledge  of  the  English  language  which  they  had 
acquired  while  in  the  college  where  English  was,  almost  of 
necessity,  the  medium  of  instruction.  This  emigration  to  Eu- 
rope and  the  United  States,  so  disastrous  to  Protestant  mis- 
sions and  Churches  throughout  the  Near  East,  increased  in 
proportion  to  the  mismanagement  of  the  Persian  government, 
and  the  impoverishment  of  the  Syrians  through  overtaxation 
and  the  constant  raids  of  the  Kurds. 

The  printing  establishment  in  Urumiah  was  conducted  on  a 
limited  scale,  the  annual  output  being  about  800,000  pages  of 
Modern  Syriac.  In  addition  to  the  necessary  books  for  church 
and  school,  tracts,  leaflets,  an  occasional  larger  book,  and  a 
weekly  paper,  The  Rays  of  Light,  are  published. 

The  Presbyterians,  soon  after  they  took  over  the  mission, 
began  an  important  medical  work  in  Urumiah.  With  the  large 
sums  placed  at  their  disposal  they  built  the  Westminster  Hos- 
pital, placing  Dr.  Joseph  Cochran  (1878-1895),  a  distinguished 
physician,  at  its  head. 

Not  only  was  Dr.  Cochran's  extensive  practice  in  itself  a  great 
blessing,  his  work  also  so  increased  the  respect  for  Christianity 
among  the  Kurds  and  Persians  that  the  Christians  were  less 
subjected  to  oppression  and  violence.  One  of  the  best  ex- 
amples of  this  occurred  in  1880,  when  the  Kurdish  sheikh, 
Obeid  Allah,  surrounded  Urumiah,  threatening  to  bombard  it. 
In  the  midst  of  the  general  panic  and  despair,  Cochran,  at 
that  time  a  youth  of  twenty-five,  came  forward  and  succeeded 
in  inducing  the  sheikh  to  march  away  from  Urumiah,  pointing 
out  to  him  the  many  benefits  which  the  Kurds  had  derived 
from  the  medical  mission. 

Little  could  be  done  by  the  Presbyterians  for  the  Nestorians 
living  in  the  mountains  on  the  Turkish  border.  A  few  Syrian 
preachers  and  catechists  worked  among  them,  and  now  and 
then  a  Syrian  doctor,  who  had  been  trained  by  Dr.  Cochran ; 
two  boarding-schools  and  twelve  primary-schools  were  also 
maintained.  The  missionaries  made  an  effort,  in  spite  of  the 
increasing  insecurity  of  the  region,  to  keep  in  touch  with  these 


3o8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

outposts  by  means  of  regular  visits ;  but  such  visits  were  often 
for  years  at  a  time  impossible.^ 


3.     Missionary  Competition 

When  one  considers  that  the  Nestorians  of  Persia  number 
at  most  25,000,  and  that  there  are  only  80,000  of  the  moun- 
tain Nestorians,  whom  it  is  so  hard  to  reach,  one  could  wish 
that  the  Presbyterians  might  have  been  left  to  carry  on  mis- 
sion work  among  them  alone.  But  we  have  already  told  how 
the  French  Lazarists  entered  into  competition  with  them 
there.  We  must,  in  this  section,  give  some  account  of  a  host 
of  rival  missions. 

It  was  unpleasant  for  the  Americans  when,  in  1881,  a  small 
German  Lutheran  mission  began  work  in  the  Urumiah  district. 
A  Syrian  priest.  Kasha  Pera  Johannes,  who  had  wandered 
into  Germany,  had  met  with  much  sympathy  from  Rev. 
Theodor  Harms,  pastor  of  Hermannsburg,  and,  with  his 
help,  had  aroused  the  interest  of  certain  Lutherans,  in  Alsace 
and  in  the  province  of  Hannover,  in  a  plan  to  reform  the 
Nestorian  Church  according  to  the  Lutheran  Protestant  faith, 
without  establishing  an  independent  Church.  Returning 
home,  Pera  Johannes  settled  in  Wazirabad  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Urumiah,  becoming  a  pastor  within  the  Nestorian 
Church.  Kasha  Yaure  Abraham  of  Geogtapa,  five  miles  to  the 
south  of  Urumiah,  associated  himself  with  Johannes.  Plenti- 
fully supplied  with  money  from  Hermannsburg,  these  two 
tried  to  disseminate  Lutheran  ideas  in  their  small  congre- 
gations. 

More  serious  for  the  Presbyterian  work  was  the  entrance 
of  the  Anglican  Mission.     After  the  Presbyterian  Mission  be- 

*  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  who  travelled  among  the  mountain  Nestorians  for 
two  months,  tells  us  that  they  are  lovers  of  the  Bible  : — "  The  Bible  is  free,  and  is 
to  be  found  in  every  house,  and  every  one  is  able  to  read  it.  Daily,  morning 
and  evening,  they  read  a  good  portion  when  they  assemble  in  their  churches.  Its 
is  not  customary  to  have  family  worship  ;  instead  of  this  they  meet  at  sunrise  in 
the  church,  when  Psalms  and  other  portions  of  Scripture  are  read." 


Persia 


309 


gan  to  form  separate  congregations,  the  leaders  of  the  Nes- 
torian  Church,  especially  the  Patriarch  Mar  Shimun,  and  those 
who  stood  nearest  to  him,  were  on  the  lookout  for  another 
mission,  which  would  leave  their  Church  intact,  and  would 
act  as  a  counterpoise  to  the  increasing  influence  of  the  Pres- 
byterians. The  attention  of  the  leaders  of  the  Anglican 
Church  had  already  been  attracted  to  the  Nestorians.  In 
1835  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  and  the  Society  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  had  sent  a  joint  expedition 
to  Kurdistan,  to  make  enquiries  concerning  the  land  and  its 
people,  especially,  also,  to  look  into  ecclesiastical  matters. 
The  result  was  that,  in  1842,  Archbishop  Howley,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel, 
sent  a  learned  missionary,  the  Rev.  G.  P.  Badger,  to  Mosul, 
to  begin  work  among  the  mountain  Nestorians.  Just  at  that 
time  the  Kurdish  sheikh,  Bedr  Khan,  was  raging  in  the  moun- 
tains of  Kurdistan.  The  general  confusion  and  disorder  were 
such  that  Badger  had  to  return  in  despair  to  England  within 
a  year. 

Thirty-four  years  passed  before  another  missionary,  Rev. 
E.  L.  Cutts,  was  sent  to  Kurdistan,  and  he,  too,  left  within  a 
year.  His  successor,  the  Scandinavian  Wahl,  pressed  for- 
ward into  the  heart  of  Kurdistan  and  established  himself  in 
Kotchhannes  and  Duzza,  where  he  remained  five^years  (1880- 
1885),  amidst  great  deprivations.  In  the  year  1886  the  Arch- 
bishops of  Canterbury  and  York  organized  this  mission  under 
the  misleading  title,  "  Assyrian  Mission,"  with  the  purpose  of 
reforming  the  Nestorian  Church  from  within.  And  there  was 
room  enough  for  the  Anglicans,  if  only  they  would  devote 
themselves  to  the  Syrians  in  the  mountains,  among  whom  the 
Presbyterians  had  gained  so  little  foothold.  But  this  the 
Anglicans  did  only  in  that  one  of  their  missionaries  settled  in 
Kotchhannes,  some  7,000  feet  above  sea-level,  where  it  was  al- 
most impossible  to  remain  during  the  winter.  The  head- 
quarters of  their  mission  they  established  in  Urumiah.  This 
was  inconsiderate  treatment  of  the  Presbyterians,  made  worse 
by  the  action  of  the  Anglicans  in  [publicly  announcing  that 


310     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

they  had  come  to  defend  the  Nestorians  against  the  AmerL 
cans.     Friction  naturally  resulted. 

The  Anglicans  sent  out  able  men  of  learning  and  culture. 
It  is  not  by  chance  that  we  owe  to  them  a  good  literature 
dealing  with  the  Nestorians.^  They  also  deserve  the  credit  of 
having  discovered  valuable  ecclesiastical  treasures  in  the  An- 
cient Syriac  language,  which,  by  their  reprints,  they  have 
made  accessible  not  only  to  the  scholars  of  Europe,  but  also 
to  the  Syrian  clergy.  In  contrast  with  the  Americans,  who 
had  made  Modern  Syriac  a  written  language,  and  had  me- 
thodically used  it  in  their  publications,  the  Anglicans  endeav- 
oured to  teach  the  Syrian  clergy  the  ancient  ecclesiastical  lan- 
guage. This  language  they  also  taught  in  their  schools. 
Their  printing-press  in  Urumiah  was  their  chief  agency.  Apart 
from  this  their  work  lacked  continuity,  especially  since  their 
missionaries  did  not  stay  longer  than  five  years,  or  at  the 
most,  ten  years  in  Urumiah,  only  one  remaining  for  twenty 
years.  They  established  a  boys'  boarding-school,  and  one  for 
girls,  in  Urumiah,  while  in  Kotchhannes  they  maintained  dur- 
ing five  months  in  the  summer  a  boarding-school  for  the  sons 
of  priestly  families,  who  were  themselves'  to  become  priests. 
For  a  time  they  had  three  or  four  lady  missionaries  and  a 
medical  missionary  in  Urumiah.  In  addition,  they  established 
village  schools  throughout  the  territory  inhabited  by  the  Nes- 
torians,  even  in  the  remotest  valleys,  the  number  of  these 
schools  being  at  times  as  high  as  eighty. 

Most  fateful  for  the  history  of  the  ancient  Nestorian  Church 
was  the  Eussian  invasion  of  1898.  "We  have  already  seen  that 
the  emigration  of  Nestorians  had  brought  the  people  into  close 
relations  with  Southern  Russia.  After  the  great  Kurdish  at- 
tack in  1880,  the  position  of  the  Christians,  unprotected  as 
they  were  by  the  Persian  government,  grew  to  be  well-nigh 
unbearable.     The   fearful  Armenian  massacres  showed   the 

•Dr.  Badger,  "Nestorians  and  their  Rituals,"  1843;  Riley,  "  Narrative  of  a 
Visit  to  the  Assyrian  Christians  in  Kurdistan,"  1884  ;  A.  F.  Maclean,  "The 
Catholicos  of  the  East  and  his  People";  W.  Browne,  "The  Liturgy  of  the 
Apostles  Adai  and  Mari  "  ;  O.  H.  Parry,  "Six  Months  in  a  Syrian  Monastery," 


Persia 


311 


Syrians  what  was  in  store  for  themselves,  should  they  be  de- 
livered into  the  hands  of  the  Kurds.  Moreover,  Russia's  in- 
tention to  occupy  the  province  of  Azerbaijan  became  more  and 
more  transparent.  At  this  juncture  the  idea  entered  the  brain 
of  Mar  Yonan,  an  adventurous  Syrian  bishop,  that  the  Syrian 
Church  should  throw  itself  into  the  arms  of  Eussia  by  joining 
the  Russian  Church ;  she  was  thus  to  gain  the  protection  of 
the  Russian  eagle  and  to  be  made  master  of  the  country.  This 
misguided  plan  found  unexpected  acceptance  with  the  op- 
pressed Syrians,  especially  since  a  report  was  abroad  that  the 
Russians  were  ready  to  come  to  their  help  as  a  Church  with 
untold  millions  of  rubles.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  in  the 
spring  of  1897  the  Nestorian  bishop,  Mar  Yonan,  and  Mirza 
Joseph  Khan  Arsenius  set  out  for  St.  Petersburg,  with  a 
lengthy  petition  in  their  hands.  As  a  result,  two  Russian 
monks  and  a  married  priest  arrived  in  Urumiah  on  the  25th  of 
May,  1897,  to  spy  out  the  land.  They  were  enthusiastically 
welcomed  by  the  ISTestorian  population,  being  accorded  a  trium- 
phal entry.  Men  and  women  sang  and  danced  around  them ; 
they  were  greeted  as  deliverers  from  the  yoke  of  the  Moslems. 
The  Christians  shouted  to  the  astonished  Moslems  that  it  was 
now  their  turn,  and  that  Christians  would  soon  have  their  feet 
on  the  necks  of  their  old  oppressors,  and  would  occupy  their 
houses  and  fields.  Bishop  Mar  Yonan  himself  led  the  Russian 
invasion,  which  was  crowned  with  great  success.  The  alluring 
promises  of  Russian  protection  were  most  effective,  for  ten  or 
fifteen  thousand  Nestorians  signed  their  names  in  the  lists  of 
the  Russian  monks.  The  Protestant  congregations  themselves 
caught  the  infection,  and  hundreds  of  Protestants  joined  the 
members  of  the  ancient  Church,  any  who  refused  to  do  so 
being  treated  with  scorn,  and  even  beaten.  In  the  summer 
the  monks  returned  to  St.  Petersburg,  and  there  followed  some 
months  of  intense  excitement  for  the  Nestorians,  until  Russia 
should  decide  what  action  to  take.  On  the  6th  of  April,  1898, 
there  was  an  extraordinary  meeting  of  the  Holy  Synod  in  St. 
Petersburg,  to  which  a  deputation  of  Nestorian  priests  was  in- 
vited, Bishop  Mar  Yonan  at  their  head.     It  was  determined 


312     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

that  the  members  of  this  deputation  should  be  received  into  the 
Orthodox  Church,  and  that  they  should  retain  their  former 
stations  and  offices.  The  ceremony  of  reception  took  place 
with  much  pomp  the  next  day,  in  the  famous  Alexander 
Newski  monastery.  At  once  it  was  resolved  to  establish  a 
mission  in  Urumiah.  On  their  way  thither  the  Russian  mission- 
aries received  into  the  orthodox  communion  a  colony  of  from 
800  to  1,500  Nestorians  in  Tiflis.  In  Tabriz  the  missionaries 
were  ceremoniously  received  by  the  Russian  consul-general, 
and  also  by  the  frightened  Persian  authorities.  In  Urumiah 
they  began  without  delay  to  receive  into  their  Church  the 
Nestorians  who  had  entered  their  names  in  the  lists.  Many 
of  these  had  repented  of  their  action  in  the  matter,  but  it  was 
now  too  late  to  draw  back.  By  promises,  persuasions  and 
threats,  village  after  village  was  induced  to  abjure  the 
"  errors  of  Nestorius,"  and  to  sign  a  paper  in  which  they  ac- 
cepted the  Orthodox  faith.  Twenty  thousand  of  the  25,000 
Nestorians  in  Persia  thus  joined  the  Russian  Church. 

Even  in  the  Oriental  Churches,  with  their  many  vacillations, 
there  had  never  been  so  great  a  falling  away.  Where  was  now 
the  incorruptible  loyalty  of  the  Syrians  to  their  ancient 
Church,  which  had  been  so  lauded  by  the  Anglicans  and 
Lutherans  ?  Both  these  missions  were  compelled  to  undergo 
the  pain  of  witnessing  how  even  the  congregations  in  which 
their  influence  was  strongest  went  over  en  masse  to  the  Rus- 
sian Church.  Nor  did  the  Americans  require  any  further 
proof  of  the  correctness  of  their  assertion  that  the  only  way 
to  help  the  Syrian  Church  was  by  Protestant  reorganization. 
On  the  whole,  it  was  only  their  congregations  that  remained 
steadfast,  their  church  organization  proving  strong  enough  to 
resist  this  attack. 

The  Russian  conquest  swept  over  the  country  like  a  storm. 
It  was  years,  however,  before  its  effects  could  be  fully  appre- 
ciated. The  Reformed  ISTestorian  Church  of  the  Presbyterians 
suffered  little  permanent  damage  ;  only  a  few  hundreds  of 
members  left  it,  and  these  soon  came  back  repentant,  so  that 
a  year  later  the  Presbyterians  were  able  to  report  an  increase 


Persia  313 

of  membership.  The  position  of  the  Protestants  towards  the 
other  Nestorians  had,  to  be  sure,  undergone  a  complete  change, 
and  this  change  was  at  first  unfavourable.  Whereas,  before 
the  storm,  there  had  been  no  sharp  split  between  their  con- 
gregations and  the  ancient  Church,  so  that  the  missionaries 
had  been  able  to  work  as  preachers  and  teachers  in  the  Syrian 
Church  at  large,  there  was  now  a  deep  cleft  between  the 
"  Kussian  "  Christians  and  those  of  the  Keformed  Church.  It 
was  hardly  possible  to  exercise  any  considerable  influence 
upon  the  seceders  in  their  first  zeal.  Yet  those  who  gradually 
became  dissatisfied  with  the  Eussian  Church,  and  desired  to 
leave  it,  usually  preferred  to  join  the  Protestant  fold,  where 
they  felt  that  they  had  solid  ground  under  their  feet,  rather 
than  to  return  to  the  ancient  Nestorian  Church.  In  this  way 
the  number  of  members  of  the  Reformed  Church  increased 
from  2.100  to  3,161  during  the  last  decade. 

But  what  was  to  become  of  the  "Assyrian"  Mission  of  the 
Anglicans  in  Persia  ?  There  was  practically  no  longer  an  in- 
dependent Nestorian  Church,  and  it  was  impossible  to  work  as 
Protestants  within  the  bounds  of  the  Russian  Orthodox 
Church.  Equally  impossible  was  it  that  the  Anglicans  should 
make  proselytes  among  the  Nestorian  members  of  the  Russian 
Church,  or  even  assist  such  as  wished  to  return  to  their  ancient 
Church,  for  the  Greek  Church  was,  like  the  ancient  Nestorian, 
also  a  sister  Church,  since  it,  too,  held  the  doctrine  of  an 
"  historic  episcopate."  The  Anglicans  have  consequently 
transferred  the  main  part  of  their  work  to  the  other  side  of 
theaTurkish  border,  where  they  have  made  Yan  a  new  centre 
from  which  to  reach  the  Syrians  of  the  mountains.  They 
have  been  gradually  striking  their  tents  in  Urumiah.  Their 
medical  missionary  and  lady  missionaries  have  returned  to 
England.  Their  boys'  boarding-school  has  been  closed,  and 
work  in  the  Urumiah  plain  discontinued. 

The  Russians  have  made  themselves  at  home  in  this  easily 
acquired  ecclesiastical  province.  Thanks  to  their  political  back- 
ing, their  influence  is  almost  supreme.  Political  influence  has 
secured  for  them  a  commanding  site  outside  Urumiah  for  the 


314     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

building  of  a  cathedral.  They  are  in  possession  of  all  the  old 
churches  and  benefices,  and  have  no  intention  of  spending 
their  own  money  on  the  support  and  development  of  the 
Church.  Many  of  their  converts  have  returned  to  their  senses, 
especially  since  Russia's  terrible  political  collapse  during,  and 
after,  the  war  against  Japan,  it  having  become  apparent  that 
the  hopes  entertained  of  help  from  Russia  were  not  likely  to 
be  fulfilled.  These  would  gladly  return  to  their  old  Church, 
if  only  they  could.  But  this  is  a  very  difl&cult  matter.  Some 
of  the  congregations  are  instituting  legal  proceedings  to  re- 
cover their  churches  from  the  Russians,  and  have  been  in  some 
cases  successful,  thanks  to  the  help  afforded  by  the  foreign 
consuls. 

The  most  unpleasant  and  regrettable  after-affect  of  these 
upheavals  is  the  overrunning  of  this  tiny  country  by  small 
societies.  Nestorian  adventurers  go  to  America  and  Europe, 
where,  by  touching  stories  and  exaggerated  descriptions  of 
the  work  they  are  doing,  they  win  the  interest  of  credulous 
people.  Then  they  return  home  with  full  pockets,  and,  with 
the  continued  support  of  the  friends  they  have  made,  there 
enjoy  the  fruits  of  the  "  work  "  they  have  done  in  Christian 
countries.  They  open  a  few  day-schools,  build  a  chapel  and 
engage  a  few  Syrian  helpers  ;  they  are  now  in  a  position  to 
send  glowing  reports  of  their  work  to  their  easily  satisfied 
friends  in  foreign  lands. 

Such  small  missionary  undertakings  have  sprung  up  like 
mushrooms  in  Urumiah.  The  United  Lutheran  Church  of 
America  maintains  a  few  kashas  (Nestorian  priests),  and  in 
1905,  sent  an  American  missionary,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fossum,  to 
superintend  the  work.  A  Syrian  congregation  in  Urumiah, 
which  left  the  Russian  Church,  has  joined  this  mission.  The 
Swedish-American  "  Augustana  Synode "  employs  a  kasha 
who  conducts  two  day-schools.  The  Evangelical  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  the  ISTestorian  Church,  which  was 
founded  in  1906  in  Berlin,  employs  a  kasha  who  has  had  a 
Lutheran  training  in  Germany.  He  works  in  some  degree  of 
cooperation  with  the  Anglicans,  and  has  added  a  fourth  to  the 


Persia  31^; 

already  existing  mission  printing  establishments  in  Urumiab. 
This  society  gave  birth  to  another,  which  also  supports  a 
kasha.  For  ten  years  Dr.  Lepsius'  German  "  Orientmission  " 
maintained  outside  Urumiah  an  orphanage  for  Syrian  fugitives 
from  the  mountains,  but  it  is  to  be  closed  soon.  The  English 
Plymouth  Brethren  employ  three  or  four  kashas  in  the 
"  Awishalum  "  Mission,  named  after  the  chief  representative 
of  the  mission  in  Persia,  Awishalum  (Absalom)  Seyad. 
There  are  also  small  missions  connected  with  the  American 
Dunkards,  the  Holiness  Methodists,  the  American  Southern 
Baptists,  and  the  Northern  Baptists,  as  well  as  a  small  bod}'- 
of  English  Congregationalists. 

Before  we  take  leave  of  Urumiah  we  must  make  mention  of 
some  of  the  leading  American  Presbyterian  missionaries,  and 
also  glance  at  the  hopeless  political  situation  of  the  past  two 
years,  in  the  northwest  corner  of  Persia  and  among  the 
mountain  Syrians.  A  most  able  member  of  the  Presbyterian 
Mission  was  Dr.  Cochran,  of  whom  we  have  already  spoken. 
A  skillful  surgeon,  he  enjoyed  general  respect,  even  among 
Muhammadans,  on  account  of  his  devoted  work  as  a  medical 
missionary,  lie  rendered  highly  valuable  service,  also,  by 
training  native  Syrians  to  be  doctors,  or,  at  least,  medical 
assistants.  At  the  age  of  fifty  he  was  removed  by  death 
(1905).  In  the  circle  of  the  missionaries  the  Labarees  have 
been  a  prominent  family.  The  venerable  Dr.  Benjamin 
Labaree  served  for  forty-six  years  (1860-1906),  though  not 
continuously,  in  the  Urumiah  Mission,  of  which,  particularly 
after  his  last  return  in  1898,  he  was  the  soul.  In  addition  to 
his  other  activities  he  did  good  work  as  an  author  in  the 
Modern  Syriac  language,  and  as  a  reviser  of  the  Modern 
Syriac  translation  of  the  Bible.  He  had  the  joy  of  seeing  a 
son  and  a  daughter  enter  the  service  of  the  Persian  Mission. 
This  son,  while  making  a  missionary  tour  in  the  plain  of 
Salmas  to  the  north  of  Urumiah,  was  murdered,  in  the  summer 
of  1905,  by  a  fanatical  sayid  (a  descendant  of  the  Prophet), 
assisted  by  a  horde  of  Bogzaba  Kurds  from  the  Dasht  plain, 
which  lies  west  of  Urumiah.     Such  unprovoked  murder  of  a 


316     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

missionary  was  a  thing  unheard  of ;  and  it  was  the  more  sur- 
prising since  the  missionaries  were  supposed  to  be  on  particu- 
larly friendly  terms  with  these  Dasht  Kurds,  many  of  whom 
had  derived  much  benefit  from  the  mission  hospital.  Though 
urged  to  do  so  by  the  English  and  American  consuls,  the 
weak  Persian  government  did  not  dare  to  assert  its  authority 
and  punish  the  murderers.  It  was  a  comfort  to  the  sorrowing 
father  that  another  of  his  sons,  at  that  time  a  minister  in 
America,  set  out  at  once  to  take  his  brother's  place.  Dr. 
Labaree  lived  long  enough  to  welcome  his  second  son  in 
Ururaiah.  Then,  attacked  by  a  serious  illness,  he  died,  while 
on  the  North  Sea,  on  his  way  to  seek  the  advice  of  German 
doctors,  on  the  9th  of  March,  1906. 

During  the  last  few  years  matters  have  gone  from  bad  to 
worse  in  that  northwestern  corner  of  Persia.  The  wheat  har- 
vest failed  for  several  years,  and  the  people  have  suffered  from 
famine.  Nor  have  the  Syrians  been  able  to  earn  money  in 
Eussia,  as  thousands  of  them  used  to  do,  because  of  the  revo- 
lution there.  After  the  Armenian  massacres  of  1895  and 
1896,  also,  tens  of  thousands  of  mountain  Syrians  and 
Armenians  emigrated  to  Azerbaijan,  where  the  Syrian 
families,  in  a  noble  spirit  of  hospitality,  shared  their  last 
morsel  with  the  newcomers,  and  thus  impoverished  them- 
selves. In  addition  to  all  this,  the  Turks  took  advantage  of 
the  extremity  of  the  people  in  1907  to  raise  old  boundary 
questions.  They  crossed  the  border  with  a  considerable  mili- 
tary force,  established  themselves  in  Souchbulak,  and  plun- 
dered the  districts  to  the  north  and  south  of  TJrumiah. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  the  main  stock  of  the  Syrians  in  the 
mountains  of  Kurdistan  live  in  so  inaccessible  a  region. 
And  against  missionaries  from  Urumiah  the  Turkish 
boundary  is  often  closed  for  years  at  a  time.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
these  obstacles,  a  Presbyterian  missionary  passed  year  by 
year  through  the  wilderness  of  Kurdish  mountains,  seeking  in 
the  most  remote  corners  of  the  land  the  little  companies  of 
Christians.  Twenty-eight  Syrian  preachers  care  for  thirty- 
two  small  congregations  with  about  400  members.     In  forty- 


Persia  317 

eight  villages  there  are  schools  with  841  pupils.  In  Baz 
there  is  a  small  boarding-school  doing  good  work  under  the 
efficient  and  faithful  supervision  of  a  Syrian  kasha.  Most  of 
the  other  schools  are  small,  averaging  ten  or  twelve  pupils 
each.  These  schools  are  in  session  only  four  months,  during 
the  winter,  which  is  entirely  too  short  a  term,  especially  for 
the  larger  villages,  where  there  is  increasing  demand  for  bet- 
ter schools.  The  Presbyterian  Mission  is  planning  to  found  a 
new  station  on  the  Turkish  side  of  the  Nestorian  territory,  in 
Yan,  as  a  centre  for  a  wider  school  work.  But  the  uncer- 
tainty of  the  political  situation  has  delayed  the  carrying 
out  of  this  project.  The  Roman  Catholic  missionaries,  who 
have  their  headquarters  in  Mosul,  seem  to  be  gaining  ground 
in  the  midst  of  the  general  confusion,  and  are  advancing  up 
the  river  Zab.  They  have  even  won  over  some  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Patriarch's  family. 

If..     American  Presbyterian  Missions  in  Persia,  Exclusive  of 
the  Mission  among  the  Nestorians 

"When  the  Presbyterians  entered  Persia  in  1870,  they  I 
resolved  not  to  confine  their  work  to  the  mission  among  the 
Nestorians.  In  1872  they  opened  a  station  in  the  capital, 
Teheran,  and,  in  1873,  another  in  Tabriz,  the  capital  and  the 
most  important  commercial  centre  of  the  northwestern 
province  of  Azerbaijan.  Since  the  miserable  state  of  the 
roads  made  frequent  communication  between  Urumiah  and 
Teheran  very  difficult,  and  since  a  further  extension  of  the 
work  was  planned,  they  soon  divided  the  mission  in  Persia 
into  the  Western  Persia  Mission  and  the  Eastern  Persia  Mis- 
sion (1874). 

It  was  extremely  difficult  to  make  a  beginning  in  the  new 
fields.  Direct  missionary  work  among  Muhammadans,  who 
constituted  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  population,  was 
almost  impossible.  Even  ten  years  later,  in  1880  and  1881, 
the  situation  had  hardly  changed,  as  is  shown  by  an  extensive 
and  painful  correspondence  with  the  political  authorities. 
It  had  been  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  shah  that  religious 


318    History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

meetings  on  the  mission  premises  in  Teheran  had  been  at- 
tended by  certain  Muhammadans.  An  order  was  immediately 
issued,  not  only  forbidding  the  missionaries  to  give  religious 
instruction  to  Mussulmans,  but  even  ordering  them  to  pre- 
vent the  attendance  of  Mussulmans  at  their  religious  services. 
After  careful  consideration  of  the  whole  case,  the  mission 
made  the  following  recommendations  : — (1)  It  is  the  duty  of 
all  our  missionaries  and  native  helpers  to  answer  in  the  spirit 
of  meekness,  and  not  of  controversy,  all  who  sincerely  seek 
to  know  the  way  of  life.  (2)  It  is  not  our  duty,  nor  is  it  wise 
to  open  schools  for  Mussulmans  at  the  present  time.  (3)  It 
should  be  left  to  each  station  to  act  in  view  of  the  aforesaid 
orders  as  the  providence  of  God  and  evident  duty  may  dictate. 
They  submitted  this  reply  to  the  British  minister,  through 
whom  they  were  at  that  time  in  the  habit  of  communicating 
with  the  Persian  government.  The  minister  answered  that, 
"should  the  missionaries  here  or  elsewhere  allow  Mussulmans 
to  attend  their  religious  services,  they  will  imperil  their  posi- 
tion in  the  country,  as  the  government  would  probably  inter- 
fere with  their  work,  if  they  did  not  even  forbid  their 
residing  in  Persia  "  ! 

In  this  strained  situation  it  was  wise  that  the  Americans  at 
first  confined  their  labours  to  the  non-Muhammadan  parts  of 
the  population.  There  were  scattered  colonies  of  Nestorian 
Syrians  to  be  cared  for,  and  there  was  an  important,  though 
not  very  large,  Armenian  element.  The  Armenians  were 
strongest  in  the  villages  of  the  Salmas  plain  and  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Ururaiah  ;  they  had  colonies  of  considerable 
size  in  many  of  the  large  towns,  such  as  Teheran,  Tabriz, 
Eesht,  Kasvin,  Hamadan  and  Julfa-Ispahan ;  and  they  in 
habited  isolated  groups  of  villages  in  the  Karaghan  Moun- 
tains, half-way  between  Teheran  and  Hamadan,  and  elsewhere. 
The  number  of  these  Armenians  in  Persia  is  generally  stated 
to  be  about  100,000 ;  but  Lord  Curzon,  an  authority  on  mat- 
ters in  Persia,  thinks  that  there  are  no  more  than  43,000, 
besides  the  thousands  of  refugees  who  came  over  the  Turkish 
frontier  after  the  massacres  of  1895  and  1896.     Then  there 


Persia  319 

are  about  80,000  Jews  scattered  over  Persia,  most  of  them 
living  in  and  about  Hamadan,  the  old  Ecbatana,  the  royal 
city  of  Queen  Esther,  though  there  are  smaller  colonies  of 
them  in  Teheran,  Tabriz  and  Urumiah. 

It  was  new  ground  on  which  the  Presbyterians  entered. 
Henry  Martyn  had,  indeed,  spent  eleven  months  in  Shiraz ; 
the  Basle  missionaries  of  the  Transcaucasian  Mission  had  in- 
termittently occupied  Tabriz  as  a  mission  station,  between 
the  years  1829  and  1837 ;  after  their  withdrawal  the  Scotch 
missionary.  Rev.  William  Glen,  of  the  United  Associate 
Synod  of  Scotland,  had  for  some  years  his  headquarters  in 
the  same  commercial  centre,  whence  he  made  extensive  tours 
for  Bible  distribution ;  and  missionaries  to  the  Jews  had  from 
time  to  time  visited  the  isolated  Jewish  colonies.  But  these 
were  only  sporadic  efforts. 

So  the  Presbyterians  had  to  learn  how  to  cope  with  un- 
familiar and  serious  difficulties.  The  first  decades  of  their 
patient  work  were  days  of  sowing,  in  which  the  seed  of  the 
"Word  was  scattered  broadcast  on  the  barren  fields,  in  the 
hope  that  here  or  there  a  grain  might  fall  on  good  land. 
Extensive  tours  were  now  and  then  undertaken,  either  by  the 
missionaries  themselves,  or  by  their  native  assistants,  to  the 
extreme  east,  where  the  holy  city  of  Meshhed  lies,  into  the 
deserts  of  Central  Persia  as  far  as  Yezd,  to  the  Armenian  and 
Jewish  colonies  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Hamadan,  to  the 
Armenian  villages  in  the  Karaghan  Mountains,  and  to  the 
thickly  populated  plains  north  of  Urumiah  as  far  as  the  Russian 
frontier.  Schools  for  boys  and  girls  were  opened  in  Teheran 
and  Tabriz.  A  footing  was  gained  in  Hamadan  among  the 
Armenians,  and,  some  years  later,  among  the  Jews  too,  and 
was  maintained  in  spite  of  the  strong  opposition  of  the  Ar- 
menian archbishop  and  the  Jewish  rabbis.  After  many  vicis- 
situdes and  trying  persecutions  of  the  Jewish  Christians  there, 
a  new  station  was  founded  in  this  old  and  famous  city,  in 
1881.  Other  openings  presented  themselves,  in  the  village  of 
Sheverine  not  far  from  Hamadan,  in  the  scattered  group 
of  Armenian  villages  on  the  Karaghan  Mountains,  and  among 


320    History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  comparatively  large  Armenian  population  of  the  Salmas 
plain.  Everywhere  the  work  was  uncertain  at  first.  Either 
it  transpired  sooner  or  later  that  the  Armenians  merely  Avished 
to  get  cheap  schools  for  their  children,  or  the  leaders  of  the 
old  Church  hindered  every  forward  step  by  petty  persecution 
and  intrigue.  An  advance  was  made  when,  in  1884,  against 
the  strongest  antagonism  of  the  authorities,  a  fourth  station 
was  founded  in  the  Salmas  plain,  near  the  village  of  Haft- 
devan.  Congregations  were  formed  in  Teheran  (1876),  Ha- 
madan  (1876)  and  Resht  (1883) ;  but  all  of  them  were  small,  the 
largest,  that  in  Teheran,  numbering  twelve  members.  A  be- 
ginning was  made  with  the  training  of  a  native  ministry,  some 
seven  young  men,  most  of  them  Armenians,  being  brought 
together  in  Teheran  for  a  longer  or  shorter  course  of  instruc- 
tion, often  interrupted  by  colportage  tours  or  the  require- 
ments of  some  out-of-the-way  village.  A  printing-press  was 
sent  to  Teheran,  but  it  was  never  really  operated,  since  it 
was  found  cheaper  to  have  the  necessary  books  and  tracts 
printed  in  Persian  establishments.  Every  book,  also,  had  to 
be  approved  by  the  censor  of  the  press  before  publication,  and 
it  was  easier  for  Persians  to  get  through  these  annoyances 
than  it  would  have  been  for  an  American  printer.  The 
schools  were  one  of  the  hopeful  features  of  the  mission.  At 
first  it  was  out  of  the  question  to  give  instruction  in  Persian, 
since  the  authorities  were  so  fearful  that  Muhammadan  chil- 
dren might  attend  the  schools ;  and  for  a  time  it  was  even 
doubtful  whether  the  authorities  would  permit  schools  to  be 
opened  in  which  the  Armenian  language  should  be  used. 
But  the  mission  succeeded,  though  they  could,  at  that  time, 
admit  no  Muhammadan  pupil.  A  good  girls'  boarding-school 
for  Armenian  girls  was  opened  in  the  capital.  A  good  many 
Muhammadans  attended  public  worship  in  the  mission  chapels, 
especially  in  Teheran.  Even  two  or  three  baptisms  of  con- 
verted Muhammadans  gladdened  the  hearts  of  the  lonely  mis- 
sionaries. But,  on  the  whole,  the  work  was  very  uphill  and 
taxed  the  faith  and  endurance  of  the  missionaries  severely. 
A  fresh  start  was  made  when  medical  missions  were  begun 


Persia 


321 


.-  \ 


in  1878.  The  first  medical  mission,  naturally,  was  opened  in 
Urumiah.  We  have  already  mentioned  the  devoted  and  suc- 
cessful work  of  Dr.  Joseph  P.  Cochran.  In  Tabriz  and  Teheran 
medical  mission  work  was  begun  in  1881.  In  Tabriz  the  pio- 
neer was  Dr.  G.  W.  Holmes,  a  distinguished  physician,  who,  at 
the  urgent  request  of  the  Persian  crown  prince,  entered  for  some 
years  his  personal  service,  thus  temporarily  severing  his  con- 
nection with  the  mission.  Both  these  stations  were  reinforced 
by  the  arrival  of  lady  doctors.  Dr.  Mary  Bradford  coming  to 
Tabriz  in  1888,  and  Dr.  Mary  Smith  to  Teheran  in  1890.  In 
1893  Dr.  J.  G.  Wishard  became  head  of  the  medical  work  in 
Teheran.  Dispensaries  were  opened  at  once  in  both  cities, 
and  in  the  course  of  time  hospitals  were  built.  This  medical 
work  was  a  great  blessing  to  Persians  of  all  classes,  for  the 
native  physicians  and  surgeons  were  extremely  ignorant,  dirty 
and  unreliable.  And  Persia  was  visited  almost  regularly  by 
the  most  dangerous  epidemics,  such  as  cholera,  and  the  bubonic 
plague,  which  devastated  whole  districts,  and  decimated  popu- 
lous towns.  Yet  the  medical  missionaries  had  to  overcome 
serious  obstacles.  The  idea  of  the  ceremonial  cleanness  of  the 
orthodox  Muharamadan,  and  of  the  uncleanness  of  the  native 
or  foreign  Christian,  was  so  deeply  rooted  that  Muhammadans 
c\)uld  scarcely  force  themselves  to  enter  the  house  of  a  Chris- 
tian physician,  to  be  touched  by  his  unclean  hands,  or  to 
swallow  medicines  prepared  by  him.  It  was  even  more  dan- 
gerous to  stay  under  his  roof  in  a  hospital,  daily  exposed 
to  the  contamination  of  his  presence,  and  to  eat  the  food  pre- 
pared by  the  cursed  giaour.  And  the  successful  treatment  of 
patients  was  rendered  diflQcult  by  ignorance,  carelessness  and 
superstition.  Patients  swallowed  salves  to  be  applied  ex- 
ternally, and  rubbed  their  bodies  with  pills  to  be  taken  inter- 
nally ;  they  ate  the  paper  in  which  a  powder  was  wrapped, 
or  tried  to  dissolve  it  with  the  powder  in  water.  If  the  pre- 
scribed medicine  did  not  help  at  the  first  dose,  the  patient  lost 
all  hope  and  went  to  a  native  quack.  Besides,  the  conditions 
of  life  were  very  unfavourable  for  home  treatment.  The 
patient  was  found  lying  on  the  floor,  in  a  room  occupied  by 


322     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

the  whole  family,  perhaps  with  pigs  and  fowls  mixed  up  with 
the  children,  and  a  crowd,  of  talking  and  troublesome  visitors 
around  him,  even  when  the  disease  was  contagious. 

Yet  European  medical  skill  and  Christian  charity  won  their 
way.  After  a  while  all  classes  learned  to  find  refuge  in  the 
mission  hospitals  in  times  of  extremity.  Royal  princes,  gen- 
erals and  officials  of  the  highest  rank  sought  the  advice  and 
help  of  the  medical  missionaries  no  less  than  the  poor.  Their 
renown  spread  to  the  remotest  corner  of  the  land,  colporteurs 
and  itinerating  preachers  finding  that  they  could  get  an  en- 
trance and  a  willing  hearing  by  letting  it  be  known  that  they 
belonged  to  the  medical  mission.  The  medical  missionary 
work  became  a  letter  of  recommendation  for  the  American 
Mission,  well  read  and  understood  throughout  the  land.  A 
remarkable  illustration  of  the  degree  to  which  the  old  preju- 
dices have  been  overcome  cheered  the  hearts  of  the  mission- 
aries in  Teheran  in  1906.  A  Persian  lady  of  highest  rank,  the 
wife  of  a  major-general,  a  relative  of  the  ruling  Shah,  was 
operated  upon,  with  the  Shah's  consent.  This  proof  of  confi- 
dence on  the  part  of  the  leading  authorities  made  a  deep 
impression  on  the  population  of  the  capital.  From  that  day 
women  thronged  to  the  hospital  as  patients.  In  the  same 
year  a  wealthy  Persian  woman  gave  the  money  for  an  addi- 
tion to  the  men's  hospital,  for  the  special  use  of  poor  women. 
She  paid  the  cost  of  furnishing  the  building  also,  and  took 
a  lively  interest  in  the  patients,  particularly  in  the  severe 
surgical  cases,  for  which  nothing  could  have  been  done  with- 
out a  hospital.  It  has  become  almost  a  rule  in  the  Presby- 
terian Mission  in  Persia  to  fit  out  every  new  station  with  one 
or  two  physicians.  So  Hamadan  also  was  supplied  with  two 
doctors,  a  man  and  a  woman.  After  twenty  years  of  quiet 
progress  along  established  lines,  a  large  extension  of  the  work 
was  planned,  and  two  new  stations  were  occupied  in  quick 
succession,  Resht  in  1904,  and  Kasvin  in  1905,  medical  mis- 
sionary work  being  the  mainstay  in  both  places. 

A  second  branch  of  mission  work  came  gradually  into 
prominence,  the  work  of  education.     Schools  had,  of  course, 


Persia 


323 


been  a  part  of  the  general  mission  work  from  the  beginning 
in  Persia,  as  elsewhere.  As  time  moved  on  and  Persia  came 
into  closer  connection  with  the  outside  world,  particularly 
after  the  Shah  Nasir-ed-Din  had  visited  Europe  in  spite  of  the 
superstitious  fears  of  the  mollahs  and  mujtahids,  the  convic- 
tion dawned  on  the  Persians  that  they  must  fall  into  line  with 
the  universal  progress  of  civilization.  The  Armenians  and 
Jews  were  more  progressive  at  first  than  the  bigoted  Muham- 
madans  ;  they  eagerly  sought  the  help  of  the  mission  in  estab- 
lishing primary  schools  for  boys  and  girls,  and  they  soon  de- 
manded the  founding  of  more  advanced  schools.  Gradually 
the  Persians,  too,  began  to  see  that  mission  schools  were  much 
better  than  their  own,  and  that  it  was  profitable  for  the 
future  career  of  their  sons  to  take  the  course  of  such  an 
American  school.  So  a  few  Muhammadan  pupils  quietly  en- 
tered the  mission  schools.  It  is  of  interest  to  follow  up  the 
slow  process  of  development  in  at  least  one  school  as  an  ex- 
ample of  what  happened  in  them  all. 

When,  in  1887,  the  new  boys'  school  was  opened  in  Teheran, 
most  of  the  pupils  were  taken  in  as  boarders  without  charge, 
even  the  text-books  being  presented  to  them  to  secure  regular 
attendance.  Yet,  in  spite  of  these  inducements,  the  school 
numbered  only  thirty  pupils  during  the  first  year.  After  a 
time,  such  means  of  attraction  were  abandoned;  in  1894  the 
boarding  department  was  discontinued.  Soon  pupils  were  re- 
quired to  pay  for  their  text-books.  A  few  years  later  fees 
were  required.  Yet  the  school  grew  in  numbers  and  popu- 
larity, and,  although  the  mollahs  strictly  forbade  Muhamma- 
dan pupils  to  attend,  even  this  opposition  was  quietly  over- 
come. At  present  130  of  the  236  pupils  of  the  school  are  Mu- 
hammadans,  and  even  princes  of  the  royal  family  have  been 
educated  there.  Recent  years  have  witnessed  a  desperate 
battle  as  to  who  should  have  the  paramount  influence  in  the 
school.  On  the  18th  of  April,  190Y,  an  attempt  was  made  by 
means  of  a  strike,  or  revolt,  to  force  the  mission  to  make  cer- 
tain concessions  to  Muhammadan  prejudices.  Sixty-two  pupils 
and  four  teachers  left  the  school.     A  rival  school  with  the 


324     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

pompous  name,  "  The  Eternal  United  School,"  was  started 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Persian  minister  of  education.  The 
outlook  for  the  mission  school  seemed  rather  gloomy  for  some 
months.  But  the  "  Eternal  United  School  "  soon  enough  dis- 
integrated from  in  ward  dissension,  the  rebellious  pupils  quietly 
returned  with  many  apologies  and  promises,  and  the  storm 
has  left  the  school  in  an  even  stronger  position  than  before  in 
the  popular  esteem.  It  is  encouraging  to  see  how  many  Mu- 
hammadan  pupils  there  are  at  present  in  the  schools  of  the 
Presbyterian  Mission.  In  the  Teheran  girls'  school  there  are 
forty-nine,  as  compared  with  eighty-eight  non-Muhammadans  ; 
in  the  Memorial  Boys'  School  in  Tabriz  there  are  eighty  Mu- 
hammadans  and  135jArmenians.  In  Urumiah,  where  the  Amer- 
ican Mission  is  most  deeply  rooted  and  firmly  established  by 
its  extensive  work  among  the  Nestorians,  even  separate  schools 
for  Muhammadan  pupils  have  been  started  ;  the  boys'  school 
numbers  sixty-three  Muhammadans,  as  compared  with  thirteen 
Syrians  and  Jews;  the  girls' school  has  sixty -seven  pupils,  almost 
all  of  them  Muhammadans.  So,  by  enduring[patience  and  Amer- 
ican energy,  a  footing  has  been  gained  on  very  difficult  ground 
and  there  is  a  hopeful  outlook  for  larger  efforts.  During  these 
last  few  years  a  decided  change  has  come  over  the  Persians ; 
they  are  beginning  earnestly  to  seek  a  European  education. 
Schools  with  Western  ideals,  and  after  a  more  or  less  European 
pattern,  are  springing  up  everywhere;  the  Persian  government, 
foreign  legations,  municipalities  and  private  citizens  vie  with 
one  another  in  building  up  new  schools.  In  some  places,  like 
the  capital  Teheran,  and  the  commercial  centre  Tabriz,  there 
is  already  a  brisk  competition,  which  sometimes  draws  pupils 
away  from  the  mission  schools.  But,  on  the  whole,  this  new 
current  is  a  helpful  one,  and  it  is  bringing  crowds  of  hitherto 
uneducated  youth  of  both  sexes  into  school  life,  undermining 
the  old-time  rote  schools,  and  creating  a  strong  appetite  for 
sound  education.  Up  to  the  present  time  the  Americans  have 
been  able  to  hold  their  place  as  the  leading  educational  agency 
of  the  land. 
If  there  was  a  tendency,  by  the  establishment  of  hospitals 


Persia  325 

and  schools,  to  confine  the  interests  of  the  mission  to  the  few 
large  cities  where  these  institutions  are  located,  an  extensive 
work  of  itinerating  made  a  healthful  counterbalance.  The 
colporteurs  of  the  American  Bible  Society  wandered  to  and 
fro  through  the  northern  half  of  Persia,  and  at  least  a  part  of 
the  American  Mission  force  of  every  station  spends  some 
months,  or  at  least  weeks,  of  each  year  among  the  village 
people.  Itinerating  work  is  of  special  importance^in  the  dis- 
tricts surrounding  Tabriz  and  Hamadan.  Around  Tabriz,  as 
far  as  the  borders  of  Turkey  and  Kussia,  there  stretches  the 
thickly  populated  province  of  Azerbaijan,  of  which  Tabriz  is 
the  capital,  and  in  the  fertile  plains  of  which  there  are  a  good 
many  Armenian  villages,  colonies  of  Jews,  and  numerous  clans 
of  nomadic  Kurds.  The  station  at  the  village  of  Haftdevan 
in  the  Salmas  plains  has  been  abandoned,  but  in  many  towns 
and  villages  there  are  Protestant  congregations  with  native 
pastors  and  preachers,  and  almost  everywhere  the  itinerant 
missionary  finds  a  good  hearing  even  among  Muhammadans. 
The  Armenians  alone  are  at  present  not  so  open  to  missionary 
influences  as  they  were  in  former  decades.  The  intense  polit- 
ical agitation,  which  sprang  up  among  them  at  the  time  of  the 
massacres  in  Turkish  Armenia,  has  produced  a  very  strong 
nationalist  feeling,  as  a  result  of  which  every  leaning  towards 
Protestantism  is  eyed  with  suspicion  ;  no  part  of  the  popula- 
tion is  readier  to  open  rival  schools  and  to  attempt  in  other 
ways  to  counteract  missionary  influences. 

From  time  to  time  an  opening  presented  itself  among  the 
unstable  robber  tribes  of  the  Kurds.  Gul  Baba,  an  influential 
sheikh,  head  of  a  religious  sect  which  claimed  40,000  adher- 
ents, showed  a  remarkable  tolerance ;  he  welcomed  the  mis- 
sionaries and  other  Christians  to  his  remote  mountain  retreat, 
was  glad  to  engage  in  religious  discussions,  and  read  the  Bible 
with  interest.  But  as  the  Kurds  are  most  dangerous  robbers 
and  thieves,  no  missionary  could  live  safely  in  their  mountain 
fastnesses,  and  at  no  time  has  regular  mission  work  been  un- 
dertaken among  them.  American  and  English  missionaries 
have  translated  the  New  Testament  into  several  of  the  widely 


326     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

divergent  Kurdish  dialects,  but  these  translations,  in  so  far  as 
they  have  been  printed  at  all,  have  been  printed  for  the  most 
part  in  Armenian  letters,  unintelligible  to  the  majority  of  the 
uncultured  clans.  Some  years  ago  Rev.  D.  von  Oertsen,  a 
young  missionary  of  the  German  "  Orientmission  "  settled 
down  in  Souchbulak,  south  of  Urumiah,  learned  the  Kurdish 
language,  and  has  begun  a  new  translation  of  the  Bible. 

The  other  great  centre  for  itinerant  work  is  Hamadan. 
The  large  Jewish  villages  in  this  region  presented  an  even 
greater  opportunity  than  the  Armenian  colonies  in  Hamadan 
itself,  in  Stieverine  and  in  other  towns.  "We  shall  hear  later, 
in  an  account  of  missions  among  the  Jews  in  the  Near  East, 
of  an  interesting  revival  among  the  Jews  of  Hamadan,  which, 
between  the  years  18Y5  and  1881,  gladdened  the  hearts  of 
the  missionaries  in  Persia.  Since  that  time  an  entrance  has 
been  gained  to  one  of  the  strange  Shiitic  sects,  the  Ali  Ilahi, 
the  bulk  of  whose  adherents,  estimated  at  half  a  million,  are 
living  in  the  hilly  tracts  west  of  Hamadan  and  Kermanshah. 
Even  with  Sayid  Rustam,  the  head  of  this  sect,  friendly  relations 
are  maintained.  In  no  part  of  Persia  do  the  itinerant  mission- 
aries find  such  an  open  door  and  such  an  interested  audience  as 
among  this  simple  village  folk,  most  of  them  Kurds,  despised  by 
the  orthodox  Shiites,  regarded  as  hopelessly  unclean  by  the 
mollahs,  yet  a  hopeful  field  for  the  Christian  preacher.  Every 
year  a  few  baptisms  are  reported  in  these  villages  ;  not  seldom, 
whole  families  are  converted.  The  Ali  Ilahi  villages  seem  to 
constitute  the  strategic  point  of  the  mission  field  in  Persia. 

A  further  important  agency  of  the  mission  is  the  work 
among  women.  Ever  since  the  mission  was  handed  over  to 
the  Presbyterians,  lady  missionaries  have  been  sent  to  Persia  in 
increasing  numbers.  At  present  there  are  sixteen  unmarried 
ladies,  including  four  doctors,  besides  twenty  married  women, 
altogether  thirty-six  ladies  in  the  western  and  eastern  missions 
together,  side  by  side  with  only  twenty-three  ordained  and 
medical  missionaries.  They  have  a  varied  work  in  their  hands. 
Their  girls'  boarding-schools  are  a  bright  spot  of  the  missions. 
The  Iran  Bethel  School  in  Teheran  and  the  Faith  Hubbard 


Persia  327 

School  at  Hamadan  are  among  the  best  educational  institu- 
tions for  girls  in  Persia.  Less  pretentious  girls'  day-schools 
are  to  be  found  in  all  the  stations.  They  open  the  door  to  the 
home,  and  often  to  the  hearts,  of  the  parents  of  the  pupils. 
The  work  of  the  ladies  in  dispensary  and  hospital,  their  itin- 
erations, the  social  gatherings  in  their  homes  and  the  visits 
they  make,  are  all  means  to  conquer  the  deep-rooted  antipathy, 
and  superstitious  fear  of  the  Persian  women,  thus  helping  the 
missionaries  to  come  into  close  relation  with  them,  and  bring- 
ing into  their  dull  and  dark  lives  some  rays  of  new  hope  and 
heavenly  light. 

What  is  the  result  of  forty  years  of  this  larger  mission 
work  ?  Among  the  Jews  and  the  Armenians  the  fond  hopes 
of  the  early  days  have  not  been  fulfilled.  Active  work  among 
the  Armenian  colonies  in  the  Karaghan  Mountains  and  in  the 
farming  settlements  on  the  slopes  of  the  Elburz  range,  has 
been  discontinued.  The  strong  nationalist  spirit  of  the  Ar- 
menian community  hardens  the  heart  against  Protestant  in- 
fluences. The  close  connection  of  the  Jews  with  the  Jewish 
world  outside  Persia,  and  the  munificent  donations  of  the  French 
"Alliance  Israelite"  make  the  Jews  less  accessible  to  missionary 
influences.  The  hopeful  revival  of  1875-1881  is  unhappily 
almost  forgotten.  Yet  those  early  endeavours  paved  the  way 
to  the  Muhammadan  population,  and  the  congregations  built 
up  by  converts  from  the  Armenian  and  Nestorian  Churches, 
with  a  few  Jews,  are  the  backbone  of  the  missions ;  they  sup- 
ply most  of  the  native  helpers. 

And  what  of  the  Muhammadans  ?  It  is  known  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  Koran,  death  is  the  lot  of  the  convert  to  Chris- 
tianity. Even  if,  in  connection  with  the  new  order  of  things, 
this  law  of  the  Koran  should  be  abrogated,  it  will  continue  to 
be  a  requirement  of  the  sacred  book,  and  as  such  will  be  bind- 
ing on  all  orthodox  Muhammadans.  And  even  if  conversion 
should  not  end  with  death,  there  are  sure  to  follow  painful 
persecutions,  and  the  convert  will  be  expelled  from  home  and 
family.  Against  such  fiery  trials,  almost  inevitable  in  view 
of  the  fundamental  hostility  of  Islam  to  Christianity,  even  a 


328     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

strong  European  suzerainty  would  scarcely  be  able  to  protect 
converts.  Yet  this  situation  must  not  discourage  the  mission- 
aries in  their  work,  nor  deter  converts  from  the  dangerous 
path  of  public  confession.  How  much  easier  it  would  be  could 
the  converted  be  baptized  secretly,  could  they  maintain  an 
outward  show  of  orthodoxy  like  the  Behais  and  other  sects 
who  openly  confess  Islam,  while  secretly  adhering  to  their 
peculiar  doctrines.  Yet  such  a  course  is  out  of  the  question 
for  Christians.  And  already  the  work  among  Muhammadans 
is  not  lacking  in  hopeful  results.  There  are  small  communities 
of  baptized  Muhammadans  in  Teheran  and  Hamadan.  In 
Urumiah  the  number  of  converts  from  Islam  had  increased  in 
1890  to  twenty-seven.  But  then  a  storm  of  persecution  broke 
out.  The  pious  Mirza  Ibrahim  from  Khoi  was  thrown  into 
prison,  and  when  all  threats  and  briberies  proved  useless  to 
silence  his  open  confession,  and  to  bring  him  back  to  Islam, 
he  was  brought  to  Tabriz  to  be  sentenced  there  by  the  supreme 
court.  There,  in  a  filthy  dungeon,  surrounded  by  criminals 
of  the  worst  type,  he  witnessed  to  the  last  for  Christ  and  his 
new  faith,  until  his  barbarous  fellow  prisoners  ruthlessly  choked 
him  to  death  (1 892).  His  memory  is  precious  in  the  annals  of 
the  Persian  Mission. 

Conditions  are  rapidly  changing  in  Persia  of  late  years. 
There  is  in  the  last  decade  no  annual  report  of  the  Presby- 
terian missions  that  does  not  chronicle  new  conversions  and 
baptisms,  though  of  course  such  reports  are  careful  not  to  give 
the  names  of  converts  and  the  dates  when  they  were  baptized, 
lest  their  lives  be  needlessly  endangered.  Yet,  even  in  Teheran 
converts  live  safely,  comparatively  free  from  molestation  by 
the  Muhammadans. 

In  passing,  we  note  another  missionary  undertaking  of  short 
duration.  In  1895  the  German  pastor,  William  Faber,  sent 
out  to  Persia  two  young  missionaries,  Kozle  and  Zerweck. 
The  Persian  legation  at  Berlin  became  aware  of  what  was 
going  on,  and  made  a  report  to  the  Shah.  Immediately  orders 
were  issued  to  stop  the  mission.  The  young  missionaries  were 
commanded  to  leave  the  country.     Kozle  was  taken  ill  and 


Persia 


329 


died.    Zerweck    returned    to    Germany.     The    mission   has 
never  been  resumed. 

5.     The  Work  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  Persia 

The  attention  of  evangelical  circles  in  the  Anglican  Church 
was  early  directed  towards  Persia.  Henry  Marty n,  the  ardent 
army  chaplain  in  India,  had  made  a  deep  impression,  and  his 
death  was  of  even  wider  influence  than  his  life.  Yet  there 
was  no  thought  in  England  of  taking  up  his  work  in  Persia. 
In  1869,  however,  Dr.  Eobert  Bruce,  a  missionary  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  in  India,  was  granted  permission 
to  visit  Persia  on  his  way  back  to  his  work  in  the  Pan  jab,  with 
the  purpose  of  revising  on  the  ground  Henry  Marty n's  Persian 
translation  of  the  Bible,  a  translation  not  unimportant  for 
the  mission  in  India.  He  chose  to  reside  in  Julfa,  an  impor- 
tant suburb  of  the  former  capital  Ispahan,  where  exiled 
Armenians  had  formed  a  large  Christian  community.  Bruce's 
leave  of  absence  from  India  lengthened  into  several  years,  till, 
finally,  when  a  company  of  nine  Persians  asked  for  instruction 
in  the  Christian  religion  and  for  baptism,  he  determined  to 
remain  there  permanently.  The  Mission  Board  gave  a  reluc- 
tant consent.  In  the  terrible  famine  of  1871  and  1872,  Bruce 
was  able  to  give  efficient  help,  a  sum  of  £16,000,  collected  in 
England,  Germany  and  India,  being  placed  at  his  disposal  for 
relief  work.  He  thus  won  a  foothold  among  the  fanatical 
Muhammadan  population,  and  was  able  to  open  an  orphans' 
home  for  Armenian  children.  Bruce's  activity  was  for  a  long 
time  confined  to  modest  bounds.  His  chief  work  for  the  Per- 
sians was  a  thorough  revision  of  Martyn's  translation  of  the 
Bible,  and  other  literary  labours,  though  he  neglected  no  op- 
portunity for  conversation  about  religion.  In  that  time  of 
beginnings  one  could  hardly  speak  of  results.  Bruce  himself 
said,  "  I  am  not  yet  reaping,  I  am  not  yet  sowing,  I  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  be  plowing;  but  I  am  gathering  the  stones  from 
the  field."  Easier  to  see  was  his  activity  among  the  Armenians 
in  Julfa,  particularly  since  he  was  not  content  that  they 
should  remain  within  the  bounds  of  their  own  Church,  but 


330     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

gave  himself  steadily  to  the  problem  of  transforming  them 
into  a  Protestant  congregation.  When  Bishop  French  passed 
through  Julfa  in  1883,  he  confirmed  sixty-seven  Armenians, 
and  ordained  one  of  them  as  a  clergyman,  thus  laying  the 
foundation  of  an  Armenian- Anglican  Church.  This  Church 
has  to-day  a  membership  of  three  hundred. 

In  spite  of  many  a  plea  on  the  part  of  Bruce,  and  favourable 
reports  from  various  missionaries  who  passed  through  Persia, 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  did  not  quickly  decide  to  in- 
crease its  mission  in  that  country.  Persia  was,  it  is  true, 
adopted  by  the  Society  on  the  14th  of  June,  1875,  as  one  of 
her  mission  fields,  but  not  until  1879  was  a  second  missionary 
appointed  to  work  with  Bruce,  and  in  course  of  time  to  become 
his  successor,  since  Bruce  had  already  been  a  missionary  in 
tropical  lands  for  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century.  This  new 
missionary  to  Persia  was  a  medical  missionary,  Kev.  E.  F. 
Hornle.  Early  in  the  eighties,  however,  a  change  of  opinion 
in  the  circles  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  brought  mis- 
sions among  Muhammadan  peoples  into  the  focus  of  their  in- 
terest. As  a  result,  the  solitary  and  neglected  post  in  Persia 
increased  in  importance.  Now  everything  began  to  be  pushed 
forward.  At  Bruce's  special  request,  Bagdad,  on  the  Tigris, 
was  occupied  as  the  second  station,  in  1882.  In  Persia  itself 
the  Society  was  for  ten  years  content  to  occupy  the  one  sta- 
tion, Julfa,  equipping  it  thoroughly  for  work  among  Muham- 
madans ;  thus  they  established  there  a  medical  mission,  sup- 
plied with  a  hospital  and  dispensary,  and  a  small  printing  es- 
tablishment, sending  out,  also,  lady  missionaries.  Not  before 
1897  were  any  more  new  stations  opened.  But  then  there 
followed  in  quick  succession  Kirman  in  1897,  Yezd  in  1898 
and  Shiraz  in  1900,  all  three  to  be  similarly  equipped  with  a 
medical  mission,  including  hospitals  and  dispensaries,  and  to 
be  supplied  with  lady  missionaries.  In  Shiraz  alone  is  the 
hospital  not  yet  completed. 

The  centre  of  the  mission's  activity  is  the  medical  work, 
which,  though  it,  too,  had  to  combat  the  superstition  and 
prejudices  of  the  Persians,  nevertheless  won  the  hardest  hearts 


Persia  331 

by  its  unselfish  service.  The  Gospel  was  diligently  preached 
in  the  wards  of  the  hospitals,  and  was  heard  with  gladness. 
Nor  are  conversions  infrequent  among  the  patients.  It  would 
seem  from  the  very  reticent  reports,  that  half  of  the  little 
company  of  converts  who  have  been  baptized  had  been  first 
influenced  by  the  medical  work.  The  twofold  message  of 
health  for  body  and  soul  was  also  carried  far  into  the  country 
by  the  medical  missionaries. 

How  successful  the  medical  work  has  been  in  winning  the 
confidence  of  the  people  is  well  attested  by  circumstances 
which  attended  the  building  of  the  new  hospital  in  Yezd. 
For  the  erection  of  this  hospital  (1907),  Parsees  in  Yezd  gave 
£200,  and  Muhammadans  also  made  contributions. 

A  second  branch  of  the  work  upon  which  special  importance 
is  placed  is  the  distribution  of  Christian  literature.  Ever  since 
the  days  of  Martyn  and  Bruce  great  attention  has  been  paid 
to  this  form  of  activity.  When  the  talented  Dr.  Bruce  retired 
from  service  in  1893,  the  Kev.  W.  St.  Clair  Tisdall,  D.  D.,  was 
appointed  his  successor  in  the  literary  work.  He  has  made  a 
name  for  himself  both  in  Persia  and  in  England  by  his  ex- 
ceedingly well-informed  books  on  Islam.  Strange  to  say,  it 
is  the  distribution  of  the  Bible  which  meets  with  the  most 
stubborn,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  childish  opposition 
from  the  Persian  authorities.  Boxes  of  Bibles  are  kept  for 
years  in  the  sheds  of  the  excise  officers,  and  missionaries  even 
experience  difficulty  in  getting  their  own  Bibles  into  Persia. 
It  is  an  advantage  to  the  mission  that  the  Persians  are  a 
people  of  ancient  culture,  having  a  national  literature,  so  that 
they  are  fond  of  reading.  The  Christian  literature  distributed 
by  the  agents  of  the  mission,  and  by  the  colporteurs  of  the 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  as  well,  is  read  with  intelli- 
gence, and  has  awakened  a  desire  for  better  religious  knowl- 
edge. The  Church  Missionary  Society  has  a  small  printing 
establishment  in  Julfa,  which  [prints  apologetic  and  polemic 
pamphlets.     It  is  called  the  "  Henry  Martyn  Memorial  Press." 

The  mission  has  great  difficulties  with  its  schools.  The 
Armenian  school  in  Jalfa  was,  indeed,  not  greatly  hindered 


332     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

in  its  growth  for  the  first  thirty  years.  It  was  attended 
chiefly  by  Armenian  children,  and  the  few  Persians  shared  in 
the  religious  instruction  without  making  any  difficulty.  But, 
since  the  year  1900,  there  has  been  considerable  opposition  on 
the  part  of  the  Armenians,  who  have  established  a  school  in 
opposition  to  the  mission ;  two  other  rival  schools  have  also 
been  opened,  a  Koman  Catholic  school  by  nuns  from  Paris, 
and  an  Orthodox  school  for  girls  by  certain  Kussian  ladies. 
Thus  there  are  four  schools  in  a  place  that  numbers  but  a  few 
thousand  inhabitants. 

The  Persians  are  not  lacking  in  a  desire  to  learn,  nor  do 
they  fail  to  see  that  they  can  learn  much  in  the  schools  of  the 
mission.  As  soon  as  a  school  is  opened,  it  is  usually  at  once 
filled  with  pupils.  But  the  religious  leaders,  the  moUahs  and 
mujtahids,  constantly  see  to  it  that  the  influence  of  these 
schools  shall  not  become  too  great.  The  C^iurch  Missionary 
Society  has  had  a  struggle  in  maintaining  every  one  of  their 
schools  for  Persians.  And  if  the  slightest  opportunity  pre- 
sents itself,  the  raollah  at  once  puts  an  end  to  the  attendance, 
Persian  parents  who  send  their  children  to  the  mission  schools 
being  threatened  with  exclusion  from  the  mosque,  and  the 
children  themselves  being  treated  with  scorn,  or  even  perse- 
cuted, in  the  bazars.  Yet  the  missionaries  always  make  a  new 
beginning.  In  Yezd  and  Kirman  the  difficulties  are  less  than 
elsewhere,  since  most  of  the  10,000  Parsees  of  Persia  live 
there.  Since  these  Parsees  are  more  eager  to  learn  than  are 
the  Persians,  and  since  they  are  not  so  bigoted,  the  schools 
intended  for  them  are  fairly  well  attended.  From  this  sur- 
vey it  is  clear  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  missionary 
educational  work  have  not  yet  been  so  thoroughly  overcome 
by  the  schools  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  as  by  the 
schools  of  the  American  Presbyterians. 

The  fourth  important  branch  of  the  activity  of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  is  the  work  of  the  lady  missionaries,  who 
labour  among  women,  visiting  them  and  inviting  them  to 
their  homes,  and  making  tours  through  the  villages.  Every 
opportunity  is  seized  to  gain  a  hold  upon  the  women.    The 


Persia  333 

number  of  those  who  have  joined  the  mission  church  is,  ac- 
cording to  the  official  reports,  as  large  as  that  of  the  men. 

On  the  whole,  the  results  of  the  mission  have  been  numer- 
ically small.  Of  the  392  Christians  who  are  in  connection 
with  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  fully  300  are  Armenians, 
while  a  few  are  Jews.  On  an  average  there  are  annually 
from  twenty  to  thirty  baptisms  of  adults.  Bishop  Stuart  as- 
serted in  March,  1907,  before  the  London  Committee  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society,  that,  since  1900,  more  than  one 
hundred  adult  Muhammadans  had  been  baptized.  Many  of 
these  have  a  hard  battle  to  fight,  yet  most  of  them  are  cou- 
rageous and  remain  faithful.  Repeated  attempts  have  been 
made  to  come  into  closer  touch  with  particular  groups  of  the 
people ;  for  instance,  with  the  unsettled  nomadic  Baktiari, 
living  in  the  steppes  of  Ispahan,  whose  sheikhs  met  the  medi- 
cal missionaries  with  great  friendliness  and  accorded  perfect 
religious  liberty  to  the  members  of  their  tribe.  Babists,  also, 
approached  the  missionaries  again  and  again,  and  their  recog- 
nition of  the  Bible  as  a  divine  revelation  seemed  to  be  a  point 
of  contact.  Their  arbitrary  allegorical  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  however,  by  which  they  make  any  text  mean  what  they 
want  it  to  mean,  dashed  this  hope  to  the  ground.  The 
friendly  reception  which  the  missionaries  sometimes  receive 
from  all  classes  of  the  population  on  their  preaching  tours,  is 
astonishing.  On  a  tour  which  the  Rev.  H.  Stileman  made 
through  the  districts  lying  between  Ispahan,  Yezd  and  Kir- 
man,  in  1899,  he  everywhere  found  "  open  doors  "  as  never 
before  in  Persia.  There  was  hardly  any  of  the  usual  Muham- 
madan  bitterness  in  resisting  Christian  influences,  but  rather 
a  marked  receptivity  for  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel.  Chris- 
tian books  were  also  eagerly  received,  even  by  mollahs.^ 

It  was  a  valuable  accession  to  the  mission  when,  after  forty- 
four  years  of  missionary  work  in  various  fields.  Bishop  Stuart, 
who  had  done  so  much  for  the  Maori  Mission,  resigned  the 
bishopric  of  Waiapu  (1894),  and  went  to  Julfa  in  his  sixty- 

*  "Open Doors  in  Southern  Persia,"  Intelligencer,  1899,  pp.  498  ff. 


334     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

seventh  year  as  an  ordinary  missionary.  In  this  he  was  fol- 
lowing the  example  of  his  departed  friend,  Bishop  French, 
who,  as  we  have  seen,  gave  up  his  work  in  India  at  an  ad- 
vanced age  to  go  to  Muscat.  He  is  still  labouring  in  this 
difficult  Persian  Mission,  cheerfully  bearing  its  hardships  in 
his  old  age.  Under  his  leadership,  the  work  of  the  mission  in 
Julfa  has,  in  the  last  five  years,  been  transferred  from  the 
quiet  Armenian  suburb  to  the  busy  city  of  Ispahan.  Thus 
the  hospitals  and  the  schools  of  the  mission  were  brought  into 
the  centre  of  public  interest. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  in  late  years  there  has  been  so  much 
disturbance  in  connection  with  the  political  development.  In 
the  autumn  of  1906  the  Shah  Muzaffar-ed-Din  (1896-1907), 
under  pressure  from  the  people,  granted  a  constitution.  He 
died  on  the  8th  of  January,  1907.  His  son,  Muhammad  Ali 
Mirza,  succeeded  him.  It  was  incumbent  on  the  new  Shah  to 
fulfill  the  promises  of  his  father,  and  to  call  a  parliament. 
This  was,  to  be  sure,  rendered  difficult  by  the  condition  of 
Persia  at  that  time  ;  a  revolt  led  by  his  brother  in  the  west- 
ern provinces  of  Luristan  and  Arabistan  had  to  be  forcibly 
suppressed  ;  commerce  was  at  a  low  ebb  throughout  the  coun- 
try ;  and,  in  1904  and  1905,  there  had  occurred  a  fearful  epi- 
demic of  cholera  in  Persia,  raging  especially  in  the  two  chief 
towns  of  Teheran  and  Shiraz.  Yet,  apart  from  this,  Muham- 
mad Ali  had  no  intention  of  letting  himself  be  hampered  by  a 
parliamentary  form  of  government.  Persia  had  ever  been 
the  most  autocratically  governed  country  of  the  Near  East. 
Suddenly  to  grant  self-government  seemed  even  to  European 
statesmen  a  leap  in  the  dark,  if  not  an  utter  impossibility. 
The  Shah,  though  he  called  a  parliament  according  to  the 
constitution,  listened  willingly  to  such  advisers.  He  at- 
tempted a  coup  d'etat,  ordering  the  parliament  to  dissolve, 
and  abrogating  the  constitution.  But  he  had  miscalculated. 
His  rash  step  only  strengthened  the  determination  of  the 
Persians  to  put  an  end  to  arbitrary  government.  In  the  con- 
flict which  arose  between  the  Shah  and  the  parliament,  the 
latter  cleverly  made  use  of  the  excitement  to  extend  its  pow- 


Persia  335 

ers,  and  bent  all  its  energies  to  the  task  of  compelling  the 
ruler  to  submit.  Violent  disturbances  occurred  even  in  re- 
mote provincial  towns,  sometimes  assuming  the  character  of 
rebellions.  Everywhere  anjumans  were  formed,  constitu- 
tional corporations  which  assumed  the  management  of  prov- 
inces or  towns,  expelling  or  murdering  recalcitrant  governors 
and  officials.  Thus  in  the  last  two  years  a  new  era  has  begun 
for  Persia,  though  the  land  still  stands  in  the  midst  of  the 
struggle.  Political  demonstrations  and  mass-meetings  are  the 
order  of  the  day.  Political  agitators  openly  address  gather- 
ings of  thousands  in  Teheran,  Tabriz,  and  even  in  provincial 
towns  like  Ururaiah,  The  demand  for  political  freedom  re- 
sounds throughout  the  country.  Newspapers  have  sprung  up 
like  mushrooms ;  there  are  dozens  of  them  in  towns  like 
Teheran  and  Tabriz,  with  such  titles  as  Tlie  Cry  of  the  People, 
The  Trumpet  of  Gabriel^  Justice,  Progress,  Knowledge,  The 
True  Dawn.  In  these  newspapers  radical  demands  are  made 
without  reserve.  Stronger  methods  are  also  in  vogue,  like 
the  refusal  to  pay  taxes  and  rents.  Bombs  and  dynamite  are 
not  unknown.  Persia  is  determined,  like  her  neighbour, 
Russia,  to  force  a  radical  change  in  the  government. 

Another  mark  of  the  new  era  is  an  uncommon  desire  for 
education.  Old  and  young  alike  are  beginning  to  see  that 
self-government  is  possible  only  for  a  people  of  some  educa- 
tion. Hitherto  more  than  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  Persians 
have  been  unable  to  read.  Now  there  is  a  loud  demand  for 
elementary  and  higher  schools  all  over  the  country.  Not 
schools  like  the  old  mosque  schools,  in  which  the  pupils  merely 
learned  the  Koran  by  heart,  but  schools  that  offer  a  European 
education.  How  such  schools  are  quickly  to  be  organized, 
and  where  the  teachers  are  to  come  from,  are  still  unsolved 
problems. 

The  change  in  Persia  will  be  lasting  and  thorough.  The 
old  Persia  with  its  oriental  despotism  is  doomed ;  who  can 
say  what  Persia  will  be  like  under  the  new  regime  ?  Yet  al- 
ready there  is  a  marvellous  transformation.  Any  one  would 
have  been  laughed  to  scorn  who,  three  years  ago,  had  ven- 


33^     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

tured  to  prophesy  that  in  so  short  a  time  Moslem  Persia  would 
shake  off  the  dust  of  centuries,  and  fashion  herself  into  a 
modern  constitutional  state.  For  Protestant  missions  in 
Persia  it  is  likewise  a  time  of  large  possibilities.  The  period 
of  difficult  beginnings  and  of  bitter  opposition  is  passing 
away.    What  shall  the  future  bring  ? 


VI 

EGYPT  AND  ABYSSINIA 
(A)    Egypt^ 

EGYPT  has,  from  the  earliest  times,  been  the  most  in- 
teresting, and,  from  the  historical  and  social  point  of 
view,  the  most  important  country  of  Africa.  It  is  of 
importance  to  note  that  the  Egyptian  people,  the  oldest  of 
civilized  nations,  is  a  member  of  that  Hamitic  family,  the 
habitat  of  which  extends  from  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean 
(Berbers  and  Kabyles)  across  Africa  (Haussa,  Galla,  Somali, 
Wahuma,  Watussi)  as  far  as  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Ac- 
cording to  Meinhof,  Westermann,  Reinisch  and  von  Luschan, 
the  Hottentots  are  also  a  Hamitic  race.  Now,  if  one  repre- 
sentative of  this  family  has,  under  favourable  conditions,  at- 
tained a  high  degree  of  civilization,  who  will  question  the 
ability  of  other  branches  of  the  same  family  to  do  the  like  ? 
Further,  it  is  a  memorable  and  reassuring  fact  for  the  friends 
of  missions,  that  this  Hamitic  race  was  one  of  the  earliest 
leaders  in  the  Christian  Church,  and  that,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Armenians,  it  formed  the  first  national 
Church,  a  Church  widely  diffused,  not  only  in  the  Hellenized 
cities  of  Egypt,  but  even  more  among  the  village  population 
of  the  Kopts.  Islam  it  was  that  reduced  to  political  and 
social  insignificance  a  people  which  had  played  a  leading  part 
in  history  thousands  of  years  before  the  Muhammadan  con- 
quest. Under  the  ambitious  and  brilliant  Circassian  dynasty 
of  Muhammad  Ali  in  the  nineteenth  century,  Egypt  enjoyed 
conditions  comparatively  favourable  to  civilization.  Yet 
hardly  anything  more  plainly  demonstrates  Islam's  incapacity 

•  M.  Liittke,  "  Aegyptens  nene  Zeit,"  2  vols.,  1873.  J.  M.  Neale,  "  History 
of  the  Holy  Eastern  Church  ;  Patriarchate  of  Alexandria/'  (not  very  reliable). 
Lord  Cromer,  "  Modern  Egypt,"  2  vols.,  1908. 

337 


338     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

for  civilization  than  the  contrast  between  the  disturbed  state 
of  the  country  when  England  assumed  the  government  in 
1882,  and  its  present  orderly  condition.  The  changeful  and 
romantic  story  of  the  dynasty  of  Muhammad  Ali  forms  the 
political  background  of  the  history  of  missions  in  Egypt. 
Muhammad  Ali  fought  his  way  through  bloody  civil  wars  to 
the  government  of  Egypt  in  1804,  and  was  acknowledged  by 
the  Porte.  His  ambitious  mind  then  led  him  to  throw  off  the 
supremacy  of  the  Porte  and  to  establish  Egypt  as  an  inde- 
pendent African  state.  In  accordance  with  this  scheme  he 
conquered  immense  territories  in  Nubia,  Darfur,  Kordofan 
and  the  countries  adjacent  to  the  Upper  Nile.  He  even 
ventured  to  snatch  Palestine  from  the  Porte.  In  order  to 
give  his  country  the  appearance  of  a  civilized  European  state, 
he  founded  grand  schools,  providing  them  with  European 
masters,  and  imitated  the  fine  manners  of  the  French.  He 
also  sent  many  Egyptians  to  study  in  France.  To  meet  the 
expense  of  such  extravagant  enterprises  he  imposed  crushing 
taxes  and  forced  labour  on  his  unhappy  subjects.  His  two 
successors.  Abbas  and  Said  (1849-1863),  were  weaker  men, 
and  did  not  adhere  to  any  consistent  foreign  policy.  Yet 
they  endeavoured  to  make  the  lives  of  the  fellaheen  more 
bearable,  and  reduced  the  taxation.  But  Ismail  Pasha 
(1863-18Y9)  went  even  furth-er  than  Muhammad  Ali.  His 
policy  was  directed  towards  the  aggrandizement  of  his  dynasty. 
He  acquired  the  title  of  Khedive,  and,  as  such,  was  only 
nominally  dependent  on  the  Sultan,  the  title  being  also  made 
hereditary.  He  tried  to  assume  the  role  of  an  up-to-date 
civilized  ruler  by  undertaking  magnificent  schemes  of  improve- 
ment, such  as  the  construction  of  the  Suez  Canal,  which  was 
completed  in  1869,  and  the  building  of  railways.  At  the 
opening  of  the  canal  he  arranged  a  pompous  ceremony  at  im- 
mense cost.  All  the  time  the  country  was  groaning  under 
extortionate  taxation,  and  Egypt's  debt  grew  to  enormous 
proportions.  The  end  of  it  was  that  his  senseless  extrava- 
gance and  dilatory  payment  of  interest  on  loans  caused  the 
European  Powers  to  depose  him.     His  well-meaning  but  weak 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  339 

son,  Tewfik  Pasha,  was  not  able  to  manage  the  government  of 
the  country.  On  the  one  hand  the  powers  insisted  on  having 
a  guarantee  for  the  payment  of  interest  in  the  shape  of 
thorough  control  of  the  income  of  Egypt,  while,  on  the  other, 
the  Egyptian  nationalists  protested,  under  Arabi  Pasha, 
against  European  interference.  In  this  protest  they  were 
supported  by  the  powerful  mosque  party,  which  wished  to 
put  an  end  to  the  influence  of  Christians.  The  conflict  was 
rendered  the  more  bitter  by  the  differences  existing  between 
the  Circassians,  who  held  the  highest  positions  in  the  state  and 
array,  and  the  ambitious  Egyptian  military  party,  egged  on 
by  former  holders  of  sinecure  oflBces,  who  had  been  dismissed 
for  the  sake  of  economy.  What  finally  sealed  the  fate  of 
Egypt  was  the  fact  that  the  Suez  Canal  had  grown  to  be  of 
supreme  importance  to  England  as  the  gateway  to  her  colonial 
empire  in  India  and  the  Far  East.  England  was,  therefore, 
only  waiting  for  a  favourable  opportunity  in  the  midst  of  the 
general  confusion  to  step  in  authoritatively.  This  oppor- 
tunity presented  itself  in  1882,  when  Arabi  Pasha  rose  in 
rebellion.  It  was,  properly  speaking,  a  dispute  between  the 
Khedive  and  his  ministers.  Yet  England  was  able  to  make 
use  of  it  for  her  own  purposes,  since  the  fanatical  mob  in  Alex- 
andria had  savagely  attacked  foreign  and  Egyptian  Christians. 
The  English  occupation  of  Egypt  has  been  of  immense 
benefit  to  the  country,  threatened  with  ruin  under  Moslem 
mismanagement.  It  is  also  an  object-lesson  for  Turkey, 
showing  what  might  be  accomplished  within  her  borders, 
under  proper  government.  During  the  twenty-five  years 
since  the  occupation,  Egypt  has  made  astonishing  progress, 
industriall}'-,  socially  and  intellectually.  Taxation  has  been 
regulated,  forced  labour  abolished,  and  the  Nile  made  to  dis- 
tribute its  waters  impartially  by  means  of  canals  and  dams, 
the  productivity  of  the  land  being  thus  vastly  increased. 
Education  has  been  made  compulsory,  provision  having  been 
made  for  it  by  the  opening  of  about  1,000  elementary  schools, 
which  are  attended  by  upwards  of  200,000  pupils,  seven  per 
cent,  of  whom  are  girls,  and  by  the  opening  of  ten  colleges 


340     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

of  high  grade.  England  has  introduced  the  system  of  grants 
in  aid,  which  had  been  found  to  work  so  well  in  India,  the 
greater  number  of  elementary  and  intermediate  schools  being 
managed  by  the  various  religious  bodies,  under  state  supervi- 
sion and  with  state  support.  Since  1890  there  has  been  a 
yearly  expenditure  of  between  £100,000  and  £230,000  for  edu- 
cation. Freedom  of  the  press  has  been  granted,  and  the  press 
has  gained  an  astonishing  influence.  The  value  of  land  has 
risen  in  proportion  to  the  increasing  security  of  life,  property 
and  trade.  Immigrants  come  from  all  the  neighbouring  Turk- 
ish countries  to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  religious  and  social  liberty. 
Egypt  has  thus  become  the  intellectual  light  of  the  Near  East. 
Of  the  total  population  of  Egypt  in  1897  (9,734,405)  8,978,- 
775  were  Muhammadans,  an  evidence  that  Islam  has  prevailed 
here  more  than  in  most  of  the  countries  of  "Western  Asia. 
Only  755,630  were  non-Muhammadans.  Of  these  112,526  were 
foreigners,  chiefly  belonging  to  the  Roman  Church,  among 
them  24,467  Italians,  14,155  Frenchmen,  7,117  Austrians  and 
Hungarians,  and  765  Spaniards,  making  a  total  of  46,504  Ro- 
man Catholics.  Of  Greek  Catholics  there  were  38,175  Greeks 
and  3,198  Russians,  in  all  41,385.  Of  Protestants  there  were 
19,557  British  and  1,247  Germans,  in  all  20,804.  Of  Jews 
there  were  25,200.  Of  native  Christians  the  number  was 
637,357,  of  whom  27,846  belonged  to  the  Greek  Orthodox, 
the  Armenian,  the  Jacobite  and  the  Nestorian  Churches,  the 
first  of  which  has  a  patriarchate  in  this  country,  and  the  sec- 
ond an  archbishopric.  Of  these  27,846,  a  considerable  portion 
belong  to  the  "  IJniate "  Oriental  Churches  ("  united  "  with 
Rome),  and  have  a  Melchite-Greek  patriarchate,  a  Syrian 
bishopric  and  an  Armenian  archbishopric,  which  are,  how- 
ever, not  always  occupied.  If  we  deduct  these  members  of 
foreign  Churches,  we  have  left  609,511  Christian  Kopts,  of 
whom,  in  1897,  592,374  were  orthodox,  4,630  "  united "  with 
Rome,  and  12,507  Protestant.^ 

*  These  figures  are  taken  from  the  census  of  1897.  On  the  1st  of  January, 
1897,  the  American  Mission,  in  connection  with  which  are  most  of  the  Protestant 
Kopts,  reckoned  only  6,355  communicants ;  12,507  Kopts,  however,  declared 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  341 

In  spite  of  long  continued  government  by  foreigners,  and 
in  spite  of  an  extensive  immigration  which  has  taken  place 
from  the  earliest  times,  the  Egyptian  Koptic  type  has  main- 
tained its  purity  and  virility  in  an  astonishing  manner,  espe- 
cially in  Middle  and  Upper  Egypt.  The  Kopts,  who  have 
been  preserved  from  race  mixture  by  their  religious  antago- 
nism to  the  immigrants,  have  retained  the  Hamitic  type  to  such 
a  degree  that  the  children  of  the  present  day  are  replicas  of 
the  former  kings  and  princes  as  they  are  represented  on  the 
ancient  stone  monuments.  They  have  the  same  broad,  low 
forehead  and  thick,  black,  somewhat  curly  hair,  the  same 
straight,  sharply-chiselled  nose,  and,  above  all,  the  same  nar- 
row eye,  large  and  always  of  a  deep  gleaming  black.  Yet 
traces  are  not  wanting  of  the  effects  of  Muhammadan  op- 
pression, which  lasted  twelve  centuries,  and  was  especially 

themselves  in  the  census  as  Protestants.  There  is  some  doubt  about  the  num- 
ber of  Kopts  "united"  with  Rome,  and  the  Roman  Catholics  in  general,  in 
Egypt.  The  census  gave  a  total  of  56,343  Roman  Catholics,  inclusive  of  Euro- 
pean and  Oriental  immigrants.  Werner,  in  his  "Catholic  Church  Atlas,"  reck- 
ons 80,000  Catholics,  inclusive  of  Europeans,  there  being  12,000  to  13,000  Uniate 
Kopts.  His  figures,  however,  are  not  reliable,  Streit,  in  the  supplement  of  his 
"Katholischer  Missionsatlas  "  of  1906  (p.  15),  reckons  64,180  Roman  Catholics, 
inclusive  of  Europeans,  there  being  17,500  Uniate  Kopts  (p.  3).  The  Minsionea 
Catholicx  (1907),  in  which  very  detailed  statistics  are  given  for  Egypt,  reckons, 
in  one  table,  63,173  Roman  Catholic  immigrants  from  Europe,  24,000  from 
Asia,  and  only  120  of  the  Koptic  rite  ;  in  another  table,  61,120  from  Europe, 
23,924  from  Asia,  and  none  of  the  Koptic  rite.  In  the  statistical  survey,  how- 
ever, the  numbers  are,  100,184  Roman  Catholics,  2,000  Uniate  Armenians  and 
20,250  Uniate  Kopts.  We  cannot  pretend  to  account  for  such  discrepancies. 
The  Roman  Church  makes  a  great  display  in  Egypt ;  in  addition  to  the  bishop- 
rics for  the  Uniate  Oriental  Churches,  mentioned  above,  there  is  a  Latin  patri- 
archate of  Alexandria,  whose  occupant  resides  in  Rome,  and  to  which  belong  a 
Latin  bishopric,  a  prefecture  of  the  Franciscans  in  Upper  Egypt,  a  prefecture  for 
the  Nile  Delta,  and  a  mission  of  the  Franciscans  in  Lower  Egypt  ;  and  there  ia 
also  a  patriarchate  for  the  Uniate  Kopts,  under  which  there  are  three  bishoprics, 
for  the  Delta,  Middle,  and  Upper  Egypt  respectively.  The  numerous  high  dig- 
nitaries of  the  Church  control  ninety-one  priests  of  various  orders,  fifty  monas- 
teries, belonging  to  seven  different  orders  and  occupied  by  383  monks,  and 
forty -two  convents,  belonging  to  twelve  orders,  with  578  nuns,— a  large  army 
in  comparison  with  which  the  small  troop  of  Protestant  misaionariea  seems 
insiguifiioant. 


342     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

severe  under  the  Fatimides  and  Mamelukes.  Travellers,  how- 
ever, differ  strikingly  as  to  the  nature  of  the  consequent 
deterioration.  Some  describe  the  Koptic  fellaheen  as  being 
melancholy,  silent  and  unsociable,  while  others  say  that  they 
are  a  merry  race,  harmlessly  joyous  under  their  sunny  sky. 
In  either  case  their  mental  activity  has  not  been  paralyzed. 
Under  Moslem  rule  they  occupied  most  of  the  inferior  official 
posts,  especially  as  clerks  in  the  courts  of  justice  and  govern- 
ment offices.  And  they  have  made  such  astonishing  use  of 
the  educational  facilities  introduced  by  England,  that  there 
are  to-day  more  Kopts  than  Muhammadans  in  the  elementary 
and  intermediate  schools,  while  in  the  higher  schools  and 
colleges  one-third  of  the  students  are  Kopts,  although  only 
one-fifteenth  of  the  entire  population  is  Koptic  {Intelligencer ^ 
1906,  pp.  651  ff.). 

The  stay  and  backbone  of  Koptic  nationality  is  the  Church, 
the  authorities  of  which  are  viewed  with  uncommon  respect. 
At  the  head  of  these  church  authorities  is  the  Patriarch,  who 
now  resides  in  Cairo,  having  twelve  bishops  under  him.  The 
rest  of  the  clergy  are  divided  into  two  strong  bodies.  One  of 
these,  the  monks,  live  in  monasteries,  some  of  which  are  of 
hoary  age  and  much  venerated.  That  of  Maharag  (St.  Mark) 
near  Manfalut  in  Upper  Egypt,  is  said  to  contain  500  monks. 
There  are  also  convents.  Egypt  is  the  original  home  of 
Christian  monkhood,  the  country  of  Antonius  the  Hermit,  of 
Paul  of  Thebes  and  of  Pachomius.  To  the  other  class  of  the 
clergy  belong  the  no  less  numerous  priests,  some  of  whom  are 
attached  to  the  many  churches,  while  the  majority  are  or- 
dained without  receiving  benefices,  many  of  them  becoming 
mendicants.  Unfortunately  the  education  of  both  the  celibate 
monks  and  the  married  priests  is  on  a  low  level.  Neither  of 
them  know  more  of  the  ancient  sacred  language  of  their 
Church  than  is  necessary  to  enable  them  to  repeat  the  liturgies, 
and  in  some  cases  they  do  not  even  understand  these.  More 
than  half  of  them  can  neither  read  nor  write.  In  1895  the 
first  "  theological  college  "  was  opened  in  Cairo  for  the  pur- 
pose of  imparting  some  elementary  instruction  to  the  clergy. 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  343 

But  little  benefit  has  accrued  from  it,  owing  to  quarrels  con- 
cerning it  between  the  Patriarch  and  certain  progressive  Koptic 
members  of  the  Church.  Unhappily  very  few  of  the  churches, 
and  not  many  of  the  celebrated  ancient  monasteries,  are  suffi- 
ciently endowed.  By  far  the  greater  number  of  the  monks, 
and  almost  all  the  priests,  have  to  rely  on  their  own  exertions 
to  earn  a  livelihood.  The  more  self-respecting  work  at  some 
trade,  others  carry  on  a  brisk  business  in  amulets,  while  the 
remainder  beg. 

Under  such  conditions  it  is  impossible  for  the  clergy  to  ex- 
ercise any  strong,  elevating  influence.  Their  religion  consists 
chiefly  of  the  painfully  conscientious  observance  of  innumer- 
able fasts,  which  occur  every  other  day,  some  of  them  being 
very  stringent,  and  of  the  observance  of  the  many  saints'  days. 
Worship  of  the  Virgin  is  very  prevalent.  To  this  is  added 
gross  superstition  of  a  varied  character,  which  is  evidenced 
partly  by  the  use  of  amulets  for  many  purposes,  and  partly 
by  the  reliance  they  place  on  the  magical  effects  of  ecclesias- 
tical ceremonies. 

Of  late  years  there  has  been  growing,  side  by  side  with  the 
increasing  influence  exercised  by  the  missions  of  the  American 
Presbyterians  and  of  the  Anglican  Church,  a  strong  party  of 
reformers  within  the  Koptic  Church  itself,  the  "  Young  Kopts." 
Their  most  important  representative  has  been  the  Patriarch 
Cyril  X  (1854-1861),  who  was,  however,  deposed  by  the 
Viceroy,  Said,  on  account  of  his  ambitious  projects  of  reform. 
Since  that  time  the  Young  Kopts  have  succeeded  in  securing 
an  elected  synod  (1875),  and  a  clerical  council,  which  is  in- 
tended to  act  with  the  Patriarch,  for  the  express  purpose  of 
checking  him  in  the  administration  of  church  finance.  They 
have  also,  contrary  to  the  wish  of  the  Patriarch,  founded  a 
Koptic  college  in  Cairo,  called  the  Tewfik  College,  which  has 
proved  to  be  a  great  success.  And,  in  order  to  avoid  the  ne- 
cessity of  sending  their  children  to  the  Anglo-Egyptian 
schools,  in  which  they  could  scarcely  escape  instruction  in  the 
Koran  and  the  influence  of  the  Muhammadan  sheikhs  from  the 
El  Azhar  University,  they  have  latterly  ventured  to  establish 


344     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

independent  schools,  in  which  Christian  religious  instruction 
and  attendance  at  Sunday  services  are  obligatory.  They  have 
a  sufficient  number  of  intermediate  schools  of  a  high  grade, 
and  are  even  maturing  plans  for  the  founding  of  a  Christian 
university  after  the  pattern  of  the  Syrian  Protestant  College 
in  Beirut.  "With  a  view  to  checking  this  tendency,  the  gov- 
ernment has  recently  issued  an  order  that  Biblical  instruction 
is  to  be  given  in  all  schools  having  at  least  fifteen  Christian 
pupils  in  attendance,  and  the  Koptic  Patriarch  is  requested  to 
supply  the  necessary  teachers. 

1.  The  American  Mission^ 
While  various  American  and  English  missionary  societies 
were  pushing  their  work  among  other  Oriental  Churches 
about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  Anglican 
Mission  to  the  Kopts  had  nearly  come  to  a  standstill.  There 
was  but  one  missionary  left.  Rev.  Mr.  Lieder,  a  man  past  his 
prime  and  in  delicate  health.  He  conducted  services  for  Eng- 
lish residents  and  tourists  in  Egypt.  Lieder  died  of  cholera 
in  1865,  and  his  place  was  not  filled.  In  the  meantime,  how- 
ever, new  workers  had  come.  The  Associate  Reformed 
Church  of  America,  now  called  the  United  Presbyterian 
Church,  had,  in  conjunction  with  the  Irish  Presbyterians,  begun 
work  in  Damascus  in  1845.  Concluding,  however,  after  ten 
years  of  work  there,  that  the  field  they  had  occupied  was  too 
circumscribed,  the  Americans  resolved  to  extend  their  work 
to  Egypt,  and  in  1854  they  established  a  station  in  Cairo.  At 
first  it  was  not  their  intention  to  confine  their  labours  to  the 
Koptic  Church ;  on  the  contrary,  they  desired  to  preach  the 
pure  Gospel  to  Muhammadans,  Jews  and  Christians,  wherever 
opportunity  should  offer  itself.  But  the  position  of  things 
in  Egypt,  the  religious  fanaticism  of  the  Muhammadans  and 
the  comparative  accessibility  of  the  Kopts,  caused  them  to 
turn  to  the  latter  exclusively. 

^  Dr.  A.  "Watson,  "  The  American  Mission  in  Egypt,"  2d  edition,  1904 ;  C.  R. 
Watson,  "In  the  Valley  of  the  Nile,"  New  York  and  London,  1908;  Mra. 
Butcher,  "  The  Story  of  the  Church  in  Egypt,"  2  vols.,  London,  1897. 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  34^ 

The  method  which  they  adopted  differed  from  that  followed 
by  the  Church  Missionary  Society.  The  latter  had  expressly 
abstained  from  the  formation  of  congregations,  confining  itself 
to  the  spreading  of  evangelical  knowledge  and  to  the  winning 
of  individuals.  Yet,  by  this  method,  in  spite  of  their  good 
fortune  in  being  able  to  carry  on  their  work  under  the  lengthy 
rule  of  Butros  (1809-1854),  a  patriarch  who  was  well  disposed 
towards  them,  they  had  not  accomplished  much.  The  Amer- 
icans, profiting  by  this  disappointing  experience,  began  at 
once  to  come  into  direct  touch  with  the  mass  of  the  Koptic 
agricultural  class,  without  attempting  to  make  any  terms  with 
the  Koptic  hierarchy.  From  the  very  beginning  they  were 
convinced  that  they  must  aim  at  the  formation  of  Protestant 
congregations,  though  they  did  not  lose  sight  of  their  main 
object,  the  revivifying  of  the  moribund  Koptic  Church. 

The  Americans  found  it  hard  to  make  a  beginning.  Only 
with  difficulty  did  they  succeed  in  gaining  a  footing  in  Cairo, 
and,  later,  in  1857,  in  Alexandria,  where  they  took  over  the 
boys'  and  girls'  schools  which  had  been  established  a  short 
time  previously  by  a  Scotch  Mission  to  the  Jews.  The  young 
headmaster  of  the  boys'  school,  Dr.  Hogg,  entered  their 
service,  becoming  one  of  their  most  able  missionaries.  They 
purchased  a  fairly  large  house-boat,  the  Ihis,  in  which  they 
went  up  the  river  as  far  as  Assuan,  selling  Bibles  and  Protes- 
tant literature  on  the  way,  thus  coming  into  touch  with  the 
Kopts.  Fortunately  for  them,  the  two  most  influential  men 
in  Egypt  at  that  time  were  favourably  inclined  towards  them. 
Cyril  X,  the  progressive  Koptic  Patriarch,  was  zealously  intent 
on  reforming  his  Church  from  top  to  bottom,  and  therefore 
hailed  the  American  missionaries  as  allies.  The  Yiceroy,  Said 
Pasha  (1854-1863),  the  most  sympathetic  of  the  rulers  of 
Egypt  in  the  nineteenth  century,  took  care  that  they  should 
be  protected  against  the  intrigues  of  the  Koptic  clergy  and 
the  Moslem  officials,  and,  in  1862,  gave  them,  as  he  had  pre- 
viously done  for  the  Roman  Mission,  a  very  valuable  site  in  Cairo. 

The  political  and  commercial  crisis  during  the  Civil  War  in 
America,  in  the  years  1860-1865,  threatened  the  work  with 


34^     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

extinctiori  from  want  of  funds.  But  just  at  that  time  a  new 
friend  of  the  mission  stepped  in,  Dulip  Singh,  a  son  of  the 
famous  Ran  jit  Singh  of  the  Panjab.  He  had  been  educated 
in  England,  where  he  had  been  deeply  impressed  with  the 
truth  of  Christianity.  In  1864  he  came  to  Egypt  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  seeking  a  Christian  wife.  He  married  a  girl 
of  mixed  descent,  Bamba  Mueller,  a  teacher  in  the  Koptic 
mission  school  in  Cairo,  to  whom  he  had  been  introduced  by 
the  American  missionaries.  She  was  a  humble-minded,  pious 
wife  to  this  unstable  but  kind-hearted  prince,  until  she  died  in 
1887.  It  was  thus  that  this  Indian  prince  came  into  close 
connection  with  the  American  Mission,  so  close,  in  fact,  that 
he  sometimes  took  a  personal  part  in  the  work.  He  was  a 
princely  benefactor.  For  thirteen  years  he  made  an  annual 
present  of  £1,000  on  his  wedding-day ;  he  gave  large  sums, 
£17,000  in  all,  for  special  purposes,  and  he  presented  the  mis- 
sion with  a  printing-press.  (Before  his  death  in  1893,  he  fell 
back  into  heathenism.)  By  this  timely  help  in  its  hour  of 
need,  the  mission  was  enabled  to  extend  its  work.  In  1865 
they  occupied  Assiut,  the  most  important  town  of  Upper 
Egypt,  lying  in  the  province  most  thickly  inhabited  by  Kopts ; 
further  stations  were  established  in  Medinet-el-Fayum,  the 
most  important  town  in  the  Fayum,  in  1866,  and  in  Mansura 
on  the  Damietta  branch  of  the  Nile,  in  1869.  In  this  way  the 
work  of  the  mission  was  extended  over  the  whole  of  Egypt, 
although  there  was  still  a  lack  of  workers.  To  their  great 
joy  they  had  a  considerable  accession  of  Kopts  in  Kus,  in  the 
province  of  Kenneh,  below  Luxor,  their  leader  being  Fam 
Stephanos,  a  tax-collector,  who  was  highly  esteemed  for  his 
honesty  and  piety.  The  village  of  Kus  was  occupied  for  five 
years  by  an  American  missionary. 

Under  the  friendly  rule  of  Said  Pasha,  the  mission  made 
good  progress  ;  but  the  situation  changed  completely  upon  the 
accession  of  the  ostentatious  and  despotic  Ismail  Pasha 
(1863-1879).  He  would  have  liked  to  put  an  end  to  European 
influence  in  Egypt,  and  found  it  inconvenient  to  have  the  mis- 
sionaries everywhere  as  critics  and  reporters  of  his  tyranny, 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  347 

especially  in  the  matter  of  enforced  labour.  Further,  the  new 
Koptic  Patriarch,  Demetrius  II  (1861-1873),  used  all  his  in- 
fluence to  stamp  out  the  Protestant  heresy.  In  1867  he 
undertook  a  long  journey  far  into  Upper  Egypt,  in  order  to 
intimidate  any  Kopts  who  were  suspected  of  having  Protestant 
leanings,  and  to  punish  those  who  had  already  left  the 
Church,  with  the  full  force  of  ecclesiastical  excommunication 
and  government  disfavour.  Protestant  schools  were  closed, 
and  prominent  Protestants  either  imprisoned  or  banished. 
Happily,  in  this  crisis  the  American  and  English  consulates 
gave  their  powerful  support  to  the  missionaries,  and  enforced 
the  authorities  to  observe  the  hatti  humayoun,  the  magna 
charta  of  religious  liberty  in  the  Ottoman  Empire.  Such 
effectual  help  put  a  speedy  end  to  the  Patriarch's  crusade.  In 
the  twenty-five  years  following  the  year  1869,  during  which 
even  the  violent  political  upheavals  of  the  years  1879  to  1885 
did  not  materially  affect  the  mission,  the  work  of  the  Ameri- 
cans quietly  expanded  in  many  ways.  Three  main  methods 
were  adopted  of  reaching  the  Koptic  population  in  town  and 
country,  namely,  itineration,  colportage  and  educational  work. 
Every  year  extensive  journeys  were  undertaken,  able  native 
assistants  accompanying  the  missionaries,  and  an  attempt 
being  everywhere  made  to  establish  personal  relations,  and  to 
incite  the  ignorant  Kopts  to  enquiry  on  religious  subjects.  At 
the  same  time  Bibles  and  other  Christian  literature  were  of- 
fered for  sale.  The  missionaries  introduced  also  an  independ- 
ent system  of  colportage.  At  first  they  employed  a  former 
member  of  the  Chrischona  Mission,  Mr,  Schlotthauer,  a  Hol- 
lander. Him  they  provided  with  a  small  but  commodious 
Nile-boat,  the  Morning  Star,  in  which  to  journey  from  village 
to  village  along  the  Nile.  Subsequently  they  divided  the 
country  into  colportage  districts,  having  a  main  depot  in  Cairo, 
with  branches  in  Alexandria  ^  and  in  seven  other  places.     Con- 

^  In  Alexandria  is  the  printing  establishment  of  the  American  Mission,  which 
publishes  a  number  of  books  every  year.  But  the  mission  relies  chiefly  on  the 
Beirut  Mission  Press  for  most  of  its  literature,  and  ia  the  best  customer  of  that 
establishment. 


348     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

nected  with  these  depots,  they  had  book-shops  in  charge  of 
Egyptian  managers.  From  these  centres  twenty-six  colpor- 
teurs constantly  travelled,  through  the  whole  of  Egypt. 
Primary  schools,  also,  for  boys  and  girls  were  everywhere  in- 
stituted. It  is  true  that  in  all  the  towns  there  were  already 
Koptic  schools  for  boys,  but  the  teaching  in  them  at  that  time 
consisted  for  the  most  part  of  mechanical  reading  and  writing 
lessons,  so  that  it  was  not  difficult  to  enter  into  competition 
with  them.  The  only  obstacle  was  the  absence  of  a  desire  to 
learn.  There  was,  however,  at  that  time  a  regulation  exonera- 
ting from  enforced  labour  those  who  could  prove  that  they 
attended  a  school.  Concerning  this  beneficent  rule,  which  re- 
dounds to  the  credit  of  the  Egyptian  government,  there 
sprang  up  a  lively  conflict  between  the  Koptic  hierarchy  and 
the  American  Mission.  The  Koptic  priests  tried  to  exclude 
the  children  of  the  American  schools  from  the  benefits  of  the 
regulation.  Had  the  priests  succeeded,  the  schools  would 
have  collapsed.  But,  however  willing  the  local  Moslem 
authorities  may  have  been  to  do  the  Koptic  bishops  this 
favour,  their  intrigues  were  against  the  law,  and  the  Ameri- 
cans were  of  all  men  the  least  likely  to  permit  themselves  to 
be  imposed  upon.  An  unpleasant  incident  occurred  in  1869, 
when  certain  Koptic  Protestants  in  Assiut  broke  into  the 
Koptic  church,  tore  down  the  sacred  pictures  from  the  altars, 
and  destroyed  them.  This  foolish  attempt  at  iconoclasm  cost 
those  who  took  part  in  it  dear,  and  the  mission  could  not  and 
would  not  protect  them  against  the  consequences  of  their 
act. 

The  number  of  adherents  of  the  American  Mission  in- 
creased rapidly.  While  at  the  beginning  of  1870  there  were 
but  180  communicants,  there  were  4,554  at  the  beginning  of 
1895.  In  the  same  period  the  number  of  organized  congre- 
gations increased  from  two  to  thirty-three.  The  organiza- 
tion of  these  congregations  was  after  the  American  Presby- 
terian pattern.  This  vigorous  growth  taxed  the  organizing 
powers  of  the  missionaries.  A  Protestant  ecclesiastical  com- 
munity had  to  be  formed.     This  body  found  official  expres- 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  349 

sion  in  the  election  and  recognition  of  a  Kopt,  Gergis  Barsum, 
as  agent  of  the  Protestants,  and  as  their  representative  at  the 
Khedivial  Court.  The  mission  was  put  to  much  trouble  and 
expense  before  the  small  congregations  could  be  provided 
with  modest  meeting-houses.  Special  permission  from  the 
central  government  had  to  be  obtained  before  a  church  might 
be  built,  and,  since  each  such  building  was  a  visible  sign  of 
the  progress  of  Christianity  and  particularly  of  Protestantism, 
so  hateful  to  the  ruling  Muhammadans,  a  hundred  obstacles 
were  put  in  the  way  so  as  to  dela}'^,  if  not  actually  to  prevent, 
the  church's  being  built.  School  problems  were  equally 
great.  The  Egyptian  schools  were  miserable  at  the  beginning 
of  this  period,  and,  such  as  they  were,  Christian  children 
were  excluded  from  them.  Though  under  the  English 
protectorate  public  instruction  was  immensely  improved,  it 
was  undesirable  to  send  the  children  of  Protestant  families  to 
the  government  schools,  since  instruction  in  the  Koran  was 
compulsory  there.  The  old  practice  had  been  that  every 
denomination  provided  its  own  schools,  and  the  missionaries, 
with  American  energy,  undertook  to  do  this  for  the  children 
of  their  congregations.  Accordingly  many  of  the  primary 
schools,  which  had  been  founded  as  a  mission  agency  among 
non-Protestants,  were  turned  into  church  schools,  every 
congregation,  in  so  far  as  it  was  possible,  being  provided  with 
one.  By  the  year  1896  there  were  216  of  these  Protestant 
schools,  133  of  them  for  boys,  with  7,976  pupils,  and  eighty- 
three  for  girls,  with  3,038  pupils.  At  the  mission  stations 
there  were,  in  addition,  higher  boarding-schools,  the  mission- 
aries themselves  giving  part  of  the  instruction.  On  this 
foundation  a  higher  educational  system  was  built,  to  which 
belong  a  training  college  in  Assiut  (1870),  which  expanded  into 
a  general  college  in  1875  ;  two  boarding-schools  for  girls  in 
Assiut  and  Cairo  respectively,  in  which  teachers  and  Bible- 
women  could  also  be  trained  ;  and  a  large  girls'  boarding- 
school  in  Luxor,  attended  by  250  girls.  There  was  also  a 
theological  seminary,  unhappily  of  a  rather  interrupted 
existence,  first  in  Cairo,  then  for  twenty  years  in  Assiut, 


350     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

after  which  it  was  again  moved  to  Cairo.  It  was  intended 
for  the  training  of  a  native  ministry.  Since  in  Presbyterian 
churches  the  members  choose  their  own  ministers,  the  position 
of  theological  seminaries  is  at  times  difficult.  The  mission- 
aries cannot  guarantee  pastorates  to  the  students,  and  only  a 
limited  number  can  be  employed  by  the  mission.  All  that 
the  missionaries  can  do  is  to  use  their  injfluence  with  the 
congregations  in  favour  of  their  choosing  their  ministers  from 
the  candidates  trained  in  the  seminary.  The  natural  result 
of  this  uncertainty  is,  however,  that  many,  who  might  other- 
wise do  so,  hesitate  to  take  the  course. 

During  the  last  thirty  years  interest  in  women's  work  has 
grown  immensely  in  the  United  States.  Accordingly,  in 
Egypt  a  good  many  lady  missionaries  are  at  work.  In  1895 
there  were  nine  of  them.  As  they  were  seldom  permitted  to 
enter  a  Moslem  house,  their  work  lay  chiefly  among  the 
Kopts,  where  they  were  sorely  needed.  Family  life  among 
the  Kopts  was  hardly  better  than  among  the  Muhammadans. 
The  women  were  despised  and  ill-treated.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  the  Koptic  women,  stolid,  superstitious,  fanat- 
ical, as  a  rule  held  themselves  aloof  from  the  ladies,  so  that 
work  among  them  required  much  patience. 

A  disturbing  element  in  the  otherwise  steady  and  peaceful 
development  of  the  mission  were  the  troubles  caused  by  the 
Kev.  Mr.  Pinkerton,  who,  in  1869,  left  the  mission  and  began 
to  spread  the  views  of  the  Plymouth  Brethren,  hostile  as 
they  are  to  church  organization.  After  a  temporary  sojourn 
in  America,  he  returned  to  Egypt,  and,  to  the  time  of  his 
death,  pushed  his  peculiar  views,  causing  at  times  such  con- 
fusion among  the  Protestants  that  the  missionaries  were 
obliged  to  oppose  their  former  colleague  very  sharply.  After 
his  death  the  majority  of  those  who  had  come  under  his 
influence  returned  to  the  congregations  in  connection  with  the 
mission.  It  is  only  in  Assiut  and  Nakheileh  that  there  are 
separatistic  congregations,  ministered  to  by  a  Canadian  mis- 
sionary. They  have  assumed  the  name  of  "  The  Holiness 
Mission."     The    earnestness  and  sincerity  of    these  simple 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  351 

Christians  are  acknowledged,  but  witness  is  also  borne  to  the 
extravagances  indulged  in  at  their  services. 

The  Muhammadans,  who  form  the  greater  part  of  the 
population  of  Egypt,  have  hardly  been  touched,  nor  have  the 
Americans  at  any  time  devoted  much  attention  to  them  in  a 
systematic  way.  Dr.  Andrew  "Watson,  the  historian  of  the 
American  Mission,  calculates  that  in  the  period  from  1854  to 
1894  the  total  number  of  Muhammadans  who  were  baptized 
was  about  seventy-five ;  and  during  the  last  twelve  years 
about  the  same  figure  has  been  reached,  the  annual  number 
varying  between  six  and  twelve.  Most  of  these  come  from 
the  lower  classes,  though  a  few  educated  and  influential  men 
have  been  baptized.  The  great  obstacle  has  been  that  the 
principle  of  religious  liberty,  established  by  the  hatti 
humayoun,  has  been  acted  upon  by  the  Egyptian  government 
only  when  pressed  by  the  Christian  Powers.  Then  there  is 
the  very  strong  Muhammadan  esprit  de  corps ;  a  man  would 
rather  kill  his  brother,  or  a  father  his  son,  than  see  him  turn 
Christian.  One  might  have  supposed  that  the  English  occu- 
pation in  1882  would  have  altered  this,  and,  indeed,  for  some 
time  numerous  applications  for  baptism  were  made  by 
Muhammadans  who  had  stood  in  friendly  relations  towards 
the  mission,  and  who  now  expected  that  the  new  Christian 
government  would  favour  Christianity,  even  as  the  former 
government  had  favoured  Islam.  But  this  movement  was 
soon  arrested  by  the  rather  weak  consideration  of  the  English 
authorities  for  the  feelings  of  the  Muhammadans,  who  were 
much  excited  by  such  conversions  as  that  of  the  stationer, 
Muhammad  Habib.  In  their  work  among  Muhammadans 
the  Americans  confined  themselves  to  distributing  Bibles  and 
other  religious  literature,  especially  good  apologetic  books 
like  Pfander's  "Misan  ul  Haqq"  and  El  Kindi's  "Apology," 
and  to  receiving  as  many  Muhammadan  children  as  possible 
into  their  schools.  During  the  last  twenty  years  they  have 
had  never  less  than  2,000  Muhammadan  pupils,  and  in  1907 
this  number  was  increased  to  3,067,  of  whom  2,446  were  boys 
and  621  girls,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Muhammadans  did 


352     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

all  in  their  power  to  draw  away  the  children  of  their  faith 
from  the  Protestant  schools  into  new  rival  schools  of  their 
own. 

The  number  of  ordained  American  missionaries  rose  in  1895 
to  fifteen.  Two  of  those  who  have  served  in  the  mission  de- 
serve special  mention.  The  Scotsman,  Dr.  John  Hogg,  was 
one  of  the  pillars  of  the  mission.  After  his  death.  Dr.  J.  G. 
Bliss,  who  was  well  acquainted  with  the  state  of  things  in 
Egypt,  wrote  in  an  American  paper,  "  It  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  whole  land  is  in  mourning  for  this  eminent  serv- 
ant of  God,  He  was  the  prince  of  Bi'ble-workers  in  this  land 
of  darkness.  Few  are  the  places  on  the  Nile  valley  from 
Assuan  to  Cairo,  where  his  voice  has  not  been  lifted  up  for 
God  and  Bible  truth.  For  more  than  twenty  years  he  was 
identified,  more  than  any  other  one,  with  the  work  of  evan- 
gelism in  Upper  Egypt."  His  great  achievement  was  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  large  educational  centre  at  Assiut,  where  he 
founded  the  college.  He  died  very  suddenly  in  1886.  Side  by 
side  with  him  stood  his  faithful  friend  and  fellow  worker,  Dr 
G.  Lansing  (1856-1892),  one  of  the  most  energetic  missionaries 
in  Egypt,  a  learned  man,  deeply  interested  in  the  archaeology 
of  Egypt  in  its  relation  to  Bible  history. 

Since  the  year  1890  there  has  been  great  progress  in  the 
American  Mission.  No  new  station  had  been  established  in 
the  preceding  twenty  years,  in  fact  the  stations  in  Kus  and 
in  Medinet-el-Fayum  had  been  abandoned.  But  now  a  for- 
ward movement  set  in  again.  In  1893  Tanta  was  occupied,  in 
1894  Zagazig  and  Benha,  all  three  being  in  the  Delta.  Since 
then  stations  have  been  established  in  Beni-Suef  and  Luxor, 
and  Medinet-el-Fayum  has  again  been  occupied.  The  staff  of 
the  mission  has  been  increased  to  108,  of  whom  fifty-three  are 
lady  missionaries,  which  proves  how  the  work  among  women 
has  grown.  Nineteen  of  these  lady  missionaries  are  engaged 
in  the  trying  work  in  the  harems  of  Koptic  and  Muhammadan 
families,  nineteen  are  engaged  in  school  work,  and  fifteen  act 
as  medical  missionaries  and  nurses. 

The  medical  mission  has  been  greatly  extended  within  the 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  353 

last  ten  years.  Up  to  1891  there  had  been  medical  men  among 
the  missionaries  only  occasionally.  In  that  year  a  doctor  was 
permanently  posted  in  Assiut,  where,  in  the  centre  of  Upper 
Egypt,  the  work  has  progressed  very  satisfactorily,  especially 
since  a  new  roomy  hospital  with  eighty  beds  was  placed  at 
the  disposal  of  the  doctor  in  1901.  In  1902  two  lady  medical 
missionaries  were  stationed  in  Tanta,  in  the  Delta.  Here,  too, 
the  success  of  the  work  justified  the  building  of  a  comfortable 
hospital  for  women  and  children,  which  is  nearly  always  full. 
The  success  of  these  two  ventures  led  to  the  calling  of  doctors 
of  both  sexes  to  Luxor,  Benha  and  the  Fayura,  so  that  at  the 
present  time  there  are  six  doctors,  three  lady  doctors  and 
twelve  nurses  engaged  there.  In  the  course  of  a  year  2,631 
in-patients  are  treated  in  these  hospitals,  and  33,167  patients 
in  six  dispensaries,  in  addition  to  5,000  patients  visited  at  their 
homes.  Thus  40,000  people  each  year  share  in  the  service 
rendered  by  these  Good  Samaritans. 

An  equal  degree  of  strong  and  sustained  advance  is  being 
made  in  the  formation  of  congregations.  At  present  there  are 
fifty-seven  fully  organized  congregations,  with  a  communicant 
roll  of  9,349.  In  1906  alone  951  new  Koptic  members  were 
added  to  the  Church,  and  twelve  Muhammadans.  According 
to  Presbyterian  usage  the  congregations  form  four  presbyteries, 
under  the  Nile  synod.  The  mission  reports,  while  recognizing 
that  there  are  many  obvious  defects  in  the  work,  nevertheless 
maintain  that  the  Protestant  Church  acts  as  a  light,  especially 
in  the  midst  of  the  Koptic  Church,  and  that  the  work  of  evan- 
gelization is  being  carried  on  outside  of  that  Church  in  an  ever- 
increasing  measure,  proof  of  which  is  the  fact  that  two  or- 
dained missionaries  have  been  sent  to  the  Sudan.  Educational 
work  is  also  in  a  flourishing  condition.  In  the  179  elementary 
schools  (147  for  boys  and  thirty-two  for  girls)  there  are  15,871 
pupils,  taught  by  431  teachers.  The  three  girls'  boarding- 
schools  in  Assiut,  Cairo  and  Luxor  have,  in  addition,  919 
pupils,  and  in  the  twenty  other  more  advanced  schools  there 
are  3,703  boys  and  girls.  The  apex  of  this  educational  pyra- 
mid is  formed  by  the  magnificent  college  at  Assiut,  with  its 


354     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

T29  students,  and  by  the  seminary  in  Cairo,  with,  alas,  only 
thirteen  students. 

2.  Spiitler^s  "  Apostelstrasse "  {Apostles''  Road)  and  Other 
Smaller  Missions 
Father  Spittler's  "  Apostelstrasse "  is  but  an  episode  in 
Egyptian  mission  work.  In  1855  Father  Spittler  and  the 
Chrischona  Brotherhood,  which  he  had  founded  near  Basle, 
made  an  attempt  to  begin  a  mission  in  Abyssinia,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  Bishop  Gobat  of  Jerusalem  and  that  indefatigable 
pioneer  in  East  Africa,  Dr.  Krapf  (cf.  Chap.  VI,  B,  2).  Abys- 
sinia was  remote  from  the  trade  routes,  was  difficult  of  access, 
and  had  irregular  and  infrequent  communication  with  the 
outside  world.  Gobat,  Isenberg  and  Krapf  had  already  felt 
these  drawbacks  in  their  first  attempt  to  work  in  that  coun- 
try. However,  now  that  the  Chrischona  Brotherhood,  together 
with  various  other  societies,  had  entered  upon  this  field  in 
considerable  numbers,  the  hope  was  entertained  that  these 
difficulties  might,  in  some  measure,  be  overcome.  The  plan 
was  conceived  of  effecting  an  organized  connection  with  mis- 
sionaries working  in  these  far-away  posts  in  Abyssinia,  by  es- 
tablishing intermediate  stations  along  the  way.  There  were 
two  routes  to  Abyssinia.  Hitherto  the  missionaries  had  all 
gone  through  the  Eed  Sea  by  way  of  Massowa.  But  the  al- 
ternative overland  route  through  Egypt  by  way  of  Assuan 
and  Khartum  was  worth  trying.  This  plan  took  on  an  aston- 
ishing form  in  the  busy  brain  of  Father  Spittler,  under  the 
influence  of  the  visionary  Dr.  Krapf.  A  grand  series  of  twelve 
stations  was  to  be  established  from  Alexandria  to  the  bound- 
ary of  Abyssinia,  each  of  which  was  to  bear  the  name  of  one 
of  the  apostles,  and  to  be  manned  by  laymen  known  as  "  pil- 
grims," who  should  maintain  themselves  by  the  work  of  their 
hands,  at  the  same  time  doing  mission  work  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood, as  opportunity  offered,  and  acting  as  a  link  between 
the  stations  on  either  side.  Thus  a  route  would  be  opened  for 
missionaries  and  traders  between  Alexandria  and  Abyssinia. 
The    choice    of  the  name  "apostles'  road"   was  a  happy 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  355 

thought,  and  had  a  mysterious  attraction  for  Christians  in 
Germany.  The  project  grew  apace  in  the  minds  of  Spittler 
and  Krapf;  it  might  be  possible  to  reach  darkest  Africa  by 
the  "  apostles'  road  "  up  the  Nile,  for  a  branch  route  of  twelve 
stations,  to  be  called  the  "  prophets'  road,"  might  start  from 
Khartum  and  lead  into  the  heart  of  Africa,  perhaps  to  the 
great  lakes,  which  were  then  just  rising  on  the  geographical 
horizon.  While  at  home  the  friends  of  missions  were  follow- 
ing these  far-reaching  projects  with  intense  interest.  Father 
Spittler  undertook  to  carry  them  out.  Several  of  the  stations 
were  established,  St.  Mark  in  Cairo  in  1861,  St.  Paul  in  Meta- 
mah,  on  the  boundary  of  Abyssinia,  in  1862,  St.  Thomas  in 
Khartum,  St.  Matthew  in  Alexandria,  and  St.  Peter  in  Assuan 
in  1865.  Then  came  the  fall  of  King  Theodore  of  Abyssinia, 
which  put  an  end  to  the  Abyssinian  Mission.  This  rendered 
the  connecting  stations  purposeless,  and  the  whole  plan  fell  to 
the  ground.  Father  Spittler  was  too  wise  a  man  to  pursue 
a  phantom,  were  it  never  so  beautiful,  when  hard  facts  bade  a 
retreat.  One  after  another  the  apostle  stations  were  aban- 
doned. The  station  at  Cairo,  which  was  given  up  in  1872, 
deserves  particular  mention,  because  from  its  ruins  there  arose 
a  Protestant  German  congregation  in  that  city.  Mr.  Schlott- 
hauer,  one  of  the  Chrischona  brethren,  entered  the  service  of 
the  American  Mission  as  a  colporteur. 

Another  transient  attempt  was  made  by  Witteween,  a 
Dutch  clergyman  in  Ermelo.  In  1846  he  sent  two  young 
men,  who  were  unfortunately  lacking  in  training  and  ex- 
perience, to  penetrate  through  Egypt  into  the  heathen  lands 
on  the  Upper  Nile,  there  to  commence  mission  work.  Of 
course  nothing  could  come  of  such  an  enterprise.  One  of  the 
men  became  insane  in  consequence  of  the  tropical  heat,  and 
the  other  lost  courage  and  returned  home.  But  Witteween 
would  not  abandon  his  enterprise.  In  1870  one  of  his  evan- 
gelists, a  young  man  named  Nylandt,  offered  himself  for  the 
service.  After  he  had  arrived  in  Egypt,  however,  he  made 
strict  enquiries  as  to  the  country,  the  people,  and  the  pros- 
pects of  mission  work,  with  the  result  that  he  modestly 


356     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

settled  down  in  Kalyub,  which  lies  to  the  north  of  Cairo  at 
the  fork  of  the  Nile  delta,  and  there  began  to  work  among 
Kopts  and  Muhammadans.  Confined  to  this  solitary  station, 
the  small  Dutch  mission  has  carried  on  its  work  since  then 
in  a  quiet  and  humble  way.  It  maintains  several  village 
schools  and  a  small  orphanage,  and  has  several  colporteurs 
to  distribute  literature  among  Kopts  and  Muhammadans.  In 
addition  to  Nylandt,  a  man  named  Spillenaar  particularly  has 
done  much  faithful  work.  The  funds  for  this  work  are  sup- 
plied by  a  Dutch  society  called  the  "  Yereeniging  tot  Uit- 
breiding  van  het  Evangelie  in  Egypte,"  which  was  founded 
in  1886. 

The  North  African  Mission,  which  had  begun  work  in 
Algiers  and  Morocco,  gradually  extended  its  labours  along  the 
north  coast,  and,  in  1892,  gained  a  footing  in  Egypt  also. 
Here  it  has  two  stations,  one  in  Alexandria,  the  other  in 
Shebin-el-Kom,  both  being  in  the  Delta.  In  the  latter  place 
there  were  violent  disturbances,  the  Kopts  uniting  with  the 
Muhammadans  in  an  attempt  to  oust  these  unwelcome 
neighbours.  The  missionaries  received  notice  to  quit  the 
premises  which  they  had  rented.  In  the  spring  of  1907, 
however,  they  succeeded  in  buying  a  site  from  the  govern- 
ment, on  which  mission  buildings  are  now  being  erected. 
The  chief  aim  of  the  mission  is  to  work  among  Muhammadans. 
This  it  does  by  establishing  book-depots  and  reading-rooms, 
in  which  Muhammadans  can  assemble  to  gain  information 
concerning  Christianity.  Boys'  and  girls'  schools,  Bible- 
women  and  itinerant  preachers  also  find  a  place  in  the  work 
of  the  mission.  Yet  the  mission  has  not  been  able  to  develop 
any  great  activity,  owing  to  the  fact  that  there  are  only  two 
missionaries  with  their  wives,  and  one  or  two  lady  mission- 
aries.    The  work  has  also  been  much  hampered  by  illness. 

The  Egyptian  General  Mission,  sometimes  called  the 
Egyptian  Mission  Band,  was  formed  in  Ireland  in  1898.  Its 
object,  also,  was  to  convert  Muhammadans,  and  it  does  work 
in  the  Delta  in  Alexandria,  Bilbeis  and  Shibin-el-Kanatr,  as 
also  in   Suez.     Here,   too,   are    book-depots,    reading-rooms 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  357 

and  boys'  and  girls'  schools.  In  connection  with  this  mission 
a  monthly  magazine  is  published,  which  has  a  considerable 
circulation  in  Egypt.  But  no  great  number  of  Muhammadans 
have  been  converted.  The  most  interesting  of  their  converts 
is  a  Moroccan  sheikh   (cf.  "  Story  of  a   Moslem   Sheikh "). 

In  1906  there  came  to  Germany  Dr.  K.  W.  Kumm,  a 
German  who  had  left  the  service  of  the  North  African  Mission, 
a  son-in-law  of  the  well-known,  eloquent  advocate  of  missions, 
Dr.  Grattan  Guinness.  Dr.  Kumm  awakened  in  religious 
circles  enthusiasm  for  the  rather  adventurous  project  of  a 
Sudan  Pioneer  Mission  in  Nubia  among  the  Bisharin 
Beduins.  The  head  of  this  missionary  society  was  the  Rev. 
T.  H.  Zieraendorf  of  Wiesbaden.  Kumm  himself  soon  left  it. 
Assuan,  at  the  first  cataract  of  the  Nile,  was  occupied  as  the 
first  station  of  the  mission  in  1901.  At  first  there  were  many 
difficulties  and  disappointments  both  at  home  and  on  the 
mission  field,  but  latterly,  under  the  management  of  a 
medical  missionary,  two  young  missionaries  and  a  few  lady 
missionaries,  the  work  in  Assuan  seems  to  be  quietly  prosper- 
ing. Darawi  was  occupied  as  a  second  station,  a  place  lying 
to  the  north  of  Assuan,  and  inhabited  solely  by  Muhamma- 
dans. In  all  probability  this  mission  will  need  unusual 
patience,  as  it  has  chosen  a  particularly  hard  point  at  which 
to  begin  Muhammadan  mission  work.  The  Kaiserswerth 
deaconesses  have  established  hospitals  in  Alexandria  and 
Cairo.  "While  Fliedner,  the  founder  of  this  society,  was 
staying  in  Egypt  for  the  benefit  of  his  health  during  the 
winter  of  1856  to  1857,  he  rented  a  roomy  house  in  a  health- 
ful part  of  Alexandria,  which  he  fitted  up  as  a  hospital. 
This  house  was  afterwards  bought,  but,  as  its  sanitary 
arrangements  were  not  wholly  suitable  for  the  purpose,  a 
new  house  was  built,  in  which  as  many  as  28,850  in-patients 
and  out-patients  have  been  treated  in  a  single  year. 

In  Cairo  the  German,  Swiss,  English  and  North  American 
residents  founded  a  hospital,  which  was  named  the  "  Victoria 
Hospital"  in  honour  of  the  Queen  of  England.  This  was 
handed  over  to  the  management  of  the  Kaiserswerth  deacon- 


358     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

esses.  In  this  stronghold  of  Islam  there  is  no  more  effectual 
preaching  of  the  Gospel  than  this  Christian  medical  work. 
Both  these  hospitals  are  open  to  patients  of  all  nations  and 
religions. 

3.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  in  Egypt 
The  work  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  Egypt  is 
more  important  than  that  of  the  smaller  societies  of  which  we 
have  just  spoken.  We  have  already  shown  how  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  missionaries  were  sent  to  Egypt  in  connection 
with  the  great  Mediterranean  Mission  scheme  of  the  society, 
and  how  they  carried  on  a  quiet  work  among  the  Kopts.  But 
as  the  United  Presbyterians  of  America  had  started  more  ex- 
tensive operations  in  Egypt,  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
retired  for  a  time  from  that  field.  Yet  the  land  of  the 
Pharaohs,  hoary  with  age,  and  rich  in  associations  with  Bible 
history,  always  exercised  a  powerful  attraction  upon  religious 
circles  in  England,  and  the  thoughts  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  were  directed  anew  to  Egypt. 

Miss  Mary  Whately,  a  daughter  of  Dr.  "Whately,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Dublin,  had  begun  schools  for  Muhammadan  boys 
and  girls  in  Cairo  in  1861 ;  these  schools  were  sometimes  at- 
tended by  as  many  as  600  children,  and  in  connection  with 
them  there  was  medical  work.  Miss  Whately  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  English  public  by  her  book,  entitled  "  Ragged 
Life  in  Egypt."  Towards  the  end  of  her  life  (she  died  in 
1889),  she  proposed  to  transfer  the  management  of  the  schools 
to  the  Church  Missionary  Society.^ 

At  about  the  same  time,  two  influential  members  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  committee.  General  Lake  and  Gen- 
eral Haig,  drew  attention  to  the  problems  of  missions  among 
Muhammadans,  in  consequence  of  which  the  society  energet- 
ically took  up  this  long-neglected  branch  of  mission  work  in 
India,  Persia,  Palestine  and  elsewhere ;  and  Egypt  was  recog- 

^This  transfer  did  not  actually  take  place.  After  Miss  Whately's  death,  first 
her  sister  and  then  Farida  Shakur,  a  Syrian  lady,  carried  on  the  schools  until 
they  were  transferred  to  the  United  Presbyterians  of  America  in  1901. 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  359 

nized  as  being  the  best  centre  from  which  to  work.  Arabic 
is  the  language  of  Muhammadan  theology  and  culture ;  ac- 
cordingly, those  nations  which  have  Arabic  for  their  mother- 
tongue  are  regarded,  in  a  way,  as  the  nobility  of  Islam.  The 
Arabian  Peninsula,  though  possessing  peculiar  religious  at- 
tractions, the  most  striking  manifestation  of  which  is  the 
yearly  pilgrimage  (hadj)  to  the  two  sacred  cities  of  Mecca  and 
Medina,  plays  otherwise  no  important  part,  on  account  of  its 
remoteness  and  its  desert  character.  Thus  Egypt  takes  the 
first  place.  The  madriseh  in  the  El  Azhar  Mosque  in  Cairo 
is  by  far  the  most  important  university  of  the  Moslem  world. 
Contemporaneously  with  the  founding  of  Cairo  by  Gauhar, 
the  vizier  of  the  Fatimide  Sultan  Muizz  in  969  A.  D.,  this 
famous  university  arose,  and  has,  for  nine  and  a  half  centuries, 
sent  forth  an  uninterrupted  stream  of  teachers  of  classical 
Arabic  and  of  orators  speaking  in  the  sacred  language  of  the 
Koran.  In  1879,  when  the  number  of  students  was  at  its 
height,  there  were  11,095  men,  taught  by  325  professors, 
while  at  present  there  are  no  fewer  than  10,000  students  and 
250  professors.  But  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  the  standard 
of  learning  is  very  high  in  this  university.  The  curriculum  is 
still  that  of  the  Muhammadan  scholasticism  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  When  the  intelligent  predecessor  of  the  present  mufti 
attempted  to  introduce  the  study  of  at  least  some  of  the  ele- 
mentary branches  of  modern  learning,  as  geography  and  his- 
tory, he  failed.  Thus  the  El  Azhar  University  is  a  gigantic 
anachronism  in  modern  Egypt,  But  it  is  none  the  less  a 
formidable  stronghold  of  unbending  Islamic  fanaticism.  Since 
Egypt  lies  on  the  world's  great  highroad  of  commerce,  while 
at  the  same  time  her  language  is  Arabic  and  the  El  Azhar 
University  is  situated  within  her  borders,  she  has  become  the 
focus  of  Panislamism,  i.  e.,  of  the  attempt  to  combine  all  Mu- 
hammadans  in  opposition  to  Christian  states.^    Hand  in  hand 

*  Lord  Cromer  says  in  his  last  official  report  (March,  1907),  that  every  Euro- 
pean state  having  political  interests  in  the  East  should  closely  watch  this  Panis- 
lamic  movement,  since  it  may  lead  to  sporadic  outbreaks  of  fanaticism  in  various 
parts  of  the  world ;  and  that  such  an  outbreak  had  been  imminent  in  Egypt  dur- 


300     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

with  this  movement  there  is  a  determined  nationalism  ex- 
pressed in  the  motto,  "  Egypt  for  the  Egyptians,"  which  also 
aims  at  putting  an  end  to  European  influence  and  English 
government.  It  was  this  importance  of  Egypt  in  the  world 
of  Islam  that  induced  the  Church  Missionary  Society  to  take 
action.  After  the  suppression  of  Arabi  Pasha's  rebellion  and 
the  occupation  of  Egypt  by  England,  the  mission  in  Egypt 
was  once  more  begun,  but  only  for  work  among  Muharama- 
dans. 

The  Church  Missionary  Society  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
approached  this  difficult  task  at  the  start  with  sufficient  en- 
ergy. The  society  contented  itself  at  first  with  sending  to 
Egypt  one  of  the  veterans  of  their  Palestine  Mission,  who  had 
retired  from  service  some  time  before,  a  German  named  F.  A. 
Klein,  the  discoverer  of  the  Moabite  stone  of  Mesha.  His 
instructions  were  to  go  on  with  his  Arabic  translations,  in  ad- 
dition to  selling  Protestant  literature  and  coming  into  per- 
sonal touch  with  the  people.  Six  years  later,  in  1688,  Dr. 
Harpur,  a  medical  missionary,  was  sent  to  Cairo.  Zealous  in 
his  profession,  he  nevertheless  engaged  in  general  pioneering 
work  rather  than  devoting  himself  to  constant  attendance 
upon  a  hospital.  We  find  him,  accordingly,  during  the  fol- 
lowing ten  years,  doing  important  and  arduous  work,  now 
here,  now  there  ;  in  the  Sinaitic  Peninsula,  in  Aden,  Hodeida 
and  Suakim.  Egypt  has  had  the  special  benefit  of  his  skill 
only  since  there  has  been  placed  at  his  disposal  a  roomy 
house-boat,  in  which  he  can  visit  the  Delta  and  Lower  Nile  as 
doctor  and  evangelist.  The  orderly  expansion  of  the  work  in 
Cairo  began  in  1890,  when  a  considerable  number  of  lady  mis- 
sionaries were  sent  out,  and  a  mission  hospital  was  built  in 
Old  Cairo.  Since  then  the  work  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  Mission  has  expanded  in  three  directions,  medical, 

ing  the  spring  of  1906,  when  the  population  let  'tself  be  suddenly  lashed  into 
fury  by  mendacious  revolutionary  articles  in  the  Panislamic  press,  the  impres- 
sion having  been  made  that  the  supreme  head  of  the  Islamic  religion  was  being 
wantonly  attacked.  At  that  time  Egypt  was  on  the  verge  of  a  Panialamio  re- 
bellion ! 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  361 

educational  and  evangelistic.  The  Cairo  hospital  has  a  ca- 
pable staff  of  two  doctors  and  four  nurses,  and  has  had  a 
valuable  accession  in  the  "  Ethel  Pain  Memorial  Hospital " 
for  women  and  children.  It  has  many  Muhammadan  patients. 
The  lady  missionaries  devote  themselves  largely  to  girls' 
schools.  They  have  established  girls'  primary  schools  in  Cairo 
itself,  in  the  Old  Cairo  suburb  and  in  Helwan,  a  health  resort 
of  world-wide  fame.  There  are  also  girls'  boarding-schools  in 
Cairo  and  Helwan.  A  training  class  for  Bible-women  and 
teachers  completes  the  scheme.  Not  so  many  Muhammadan 
girls,  however,  attend  these  schools  as  the  mission  could  wish, 
especially  since  the  Muhammadans  themselves  have  opened 
girls'  schools  with  great  zeal,  and  considerable  financial  sup- 
port. Whenever  a  girl  appears  to  be  yielding  to  Christian  in- 
fluences, or  a  Muhammadan  joins  the  Christian  Church,  the 
schools  at  once  feel  the  shock.  The  lady  missionaries  also  do 
a  great  amount  of  house  to  house  visiting  among  Muhamma- 
dan and  Koptic  women,  in  which  arduous  work  they  have  to 
contend  with  much  opposition. 

A  new  branch  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  work  was 
inaugurated  in  1898,  when  two  close  friends,  Kev.  Douglas 
Thornton  and  Kev.  Wm.  H.  G.  Gairdner,  were  sent  out  to  do 
evangelistic  work  among  Muhammadans.  Both  these  men 
had  prepared  themselves  for  their  task  by  special  study. 
They  made  arrangements  for  public  discussions  in  Arabic  and 
English,  on  which  occasions  they  usually  opened  the  debate 
with  an  address.  They  even  ventured  openly  to  preach  the 
Gospel  on  other  evenings,  but  not  without  exciting  fanatical 
opposition  and  stormy  scenes.  They  also  made  great  use  of 
the  bookstore,  to  which,  as  usual,  a  reading-room  was  at- 
tached, being  much  frequented.  Here  they  found  many  an 
opportunity  quietly  to  present  the  contrast  between  Chris- 
tianity  and  Islam,  Christ  and  Muhammad.  Their  weekly 
paper,  Orient  and  Occident^  which  had  a  large  circulation,  ex- 
tending as  far  as  Upper  Egypt,  was  a  still  more  effective 
branch  of  their  work.  This  paper,  like  the  Epiphany  of  the 
Oxford  Brotherhood  in  Calcutta,  opened  its  columns  to  any 


362     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Egyptian  who  wished  to  state  his  scruples,  or  to  ask  questions, 
or  to  give  his  religious  experiences.  This  is  exactly  what  a 
people  in  whom  new  ideas  are  fermenting  requires.  In  this 
way  doors  were  opened  in  various  parts  of  the  country. 
Thornton  sought  to  make  the  most  of  this  by  arranging  pub- 
lic meetings  while  on  his  evangelistic  tours  throughout  the 
country.  These  meetings  were  always  crowded.  Kopts  be- 
longing to  the  ancient  Church,  as  well  as  Protestant  Kopts, 
and  even  influential  Muhammadans,  assisted  him  in  the  ar- 
ranging and  carrying  out  of  these  mission  campaigns,  which 
were  quite  a  novelty  in  the  mission  history  of  the  Near  East, 
and  which  were  even  now  possible  only  by  reason  of  the  pro- 
tection afforded  by  the  pax  Britannica.  Unfortunately  the 
talented  and  zealous  Thornton  died  on  the  Yth  of  September, 
1907,  while  still  a  comparatively  young  man. 

There  have  not  been  wanting  tokens  of  success  in  the  work 
of  the  Church  Missionary  Society.  For  twenty  years  there 
have  been  a  few  Muhammadans  baptized  each  year.  Most  of 
these,  to  be  sure,  have  been  young  people,  who  had  been 
brought  to  seek  the  truth  in  the  Syrian  or  Asia  Minor  Mis- 
sions, and  had  fled  to  seek  refuge  under  the  English  in  Egypt, 
in  order  there  to  be  instructed  and  baptized.  Some  of  the  ac- 
cessions created  much  excitement,  most  of  all,  perhaps,  the  case 
of  a  former  violent  opponent,  Mahmud,  the  son  of  an  influen- 
tial sheikh  in  the  south  of  Palestine,  and  a  graduate  of  the  El 
Azhar  University,  who,  in  October,  1905,  entered  the  class  of 
catechumens,  and,  in  February,  1906,  publicly  confessed  the 
Christian  faith  in  the  presence  of  Lord  Cromer  and  the  high- 
est Egyptian  authorities,  being  baptized  and  taking  the  name 
of  Bulus  (Paul). 

It  was  in  accordance  with  the  premier  position  of  Egypt  in 
the  world  of  Islam  that  the  first  International  Protestant 
Conference  of  missionaries  among  Muhammadans  was  held  in 
Cairo.  This  conference  met  from  the  4th  to  the  9th  of  April, 
1906.  Twenty-nine  societies  sent  delegates  to  it.  The  Church 
Missionary  Society  offered  them  hospitality  in  the  house 
occupied  by  Thornton  and  Gairdner,  which  had  once  been 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  363 

Arabi  Pasha's  palace.  Two  sets  of  lengthy  papers  dealt  with 
the  chief  Islamic  countries  and  the  methods  adopted  by  mis- 
sionaries among  Muhammadans.  These  papers  were  sub- 
sequently published  in  two  volumes,  "  The  Mohammedan 
World  of  To-day  "  (295  pp.),  and  "Methods  of  Mission  Work 
Among  Moslems  "  (236  pp.),  the  latter  being  printed  only  for 
private  circulation.  Without  question,  missions  among  Mu- 
hammadans present  so  many  peculiar  difficulties,  and  demand 
such  special  training,  that  conferences  of  experts  are  well- 
nigh  necessary,  if  Christendom  is  determined  to  prosecute  this 
branch  of  mission  work  in  real  earnest. 

4-.  The  Egyptian  Sudan 
The  location  of  the  sources  of  the  Nile  was  one  of  the 
mysteries  of  antiquity.  We  do  not  know  how  far  up  the  Nile 
the  Egyptians  pressed  in  their  conquests  and  in  commerce. 
But  at  any  rate  the  kingdom  of  Meroe  extended  as  far  as 
Khartum.  During  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era, 
Christianity  spread  from  Egypt  into  Nubia,  and  in  the  fifth 
and  sixth  centuries  it  reigned  supreme  from  Egypt  to  Ab- 
yssinia. After  Amr,  the  Arab,  had  conquered  Egypt,  he 
marched  into  Nubia,  where,  however,  he  was  bravely  repulsed 
by  a  well-disciplined  army.  Nubia  maintained  its  political  in- 
dependence and  its  Christian  Church  under  native  Christian 
kings  without  break  into  the  fifteenth  century.  An  interest- 
ing record  of  this  period  still  exists  in  the  description  of  his 
journey  by  the  Egyptian  Ambassador  Abdallah  Achmed,  who 
had  been  commissioned  in  970  by  the  Fatimide  Khalif  to  visit 
the  Christian  royal  courts  of  Nubia.  He  gives  glowing 
descriptions  of  the  cultural  and  religious  condition  of  the 
country  : — "  In  the  course  of  three  days  we  passed  about 
thirty  towns  with  beautiful  houses,  churches  and  monasteries, 
numberless  palm-groves,  vineyards  and  gardens,  extensive 
fields,  and  a  great  number  of  camels  of  good  breed  and  of 
great  beauty.  From  Dongola  to  the  confines  of  the  kingdom 
of  Alua  (Sennar)  the  distance  is  greater  than  from  Dongola  to 
Assuan.     And  in  all  the  intervening  country  you  see  an 


364     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

infinitely  greater  number  of  towns,  villages,  herds,  corn-fields, 
vineyards,  and  palm-groves  than  in  the  province  that  borders 
on  the  Muhammadan  territory."  Towards  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century  the  Mameluke  sultans  of  Egypt  found  oc- 
casion to  interfere  in  a  question  concerning  the  succession  in 
Nubia,  and  succeeded  in  placing  their  tool  upon  the  throne. 
In  this  way  the  northern  province  of  Dongola  first  became 
dependent  on  Egypt.  After  this  a  heavy  tribute  of  slaves 
was  imposed  on  the  Nubians,  and  eventually  the  country  was 
ruined  by  the  increasing  slave-trade  in  Egypt.  The  various 
provinces  and  kingdoms  into  which  Nubia  was  at  that  time 
divided  fell  into  constant  feud  with  one  another  in  the  at- 
tempt to  capture  slaves  one  from  the  other.  Gradually  the 
slave-driver  himself  came  from  Egypt  to  pursue  his  nefarious 
trade  on  a  larger  scale,  and  so  the  slave  hunts  and  slave  wars, 
that  are  so  well  known,  began.  In  this  state  of  anarchy  the 
Christian  Church  perished.  It  can  hardly  be  shown  how  its 
gradual  dissolution  took  place. 

A  Portuguese  priest,  who  travelled  in  Abyssinia  in  1520 
and  1527,  found  the  country  in  a  miserable  state  of  transition, 
being  "neither  Christian,  nor  Jewish,  nor  Muhammadan," 
"  without  religion  or  law,  but  still  with  the  desire  to  remain 
Christian."  As  they  had  neither  bishops  nor  priests,  they 
sent  a  deputation  to  the  Abuna  of  Abyssinia  to  ask  him  for 
priests ;  but  they  got  none.  Traces  of  Christianity  still  re- 
mained into  the  nineteenth  century.  When  General  Gordon 
became  governor  of  the  Sudan  in  ISSl  he  found  a  bishop  in 
Khartum  with  seven  churches  and  a  convent.  Even  this  poor 
remnant  was  fearfully  decimated  in  the  Mahdi  rising  {Intelli- 
gencer, 1899,  pp.  266  iff.,  895). 

In  1906  there  were  found  considerable  remnants  of  ancient 
Christian  writings  in  the  ancient  language  of  Nubia,  portions 
of  a  translation  of  the  Bible  and  fragments  of  ecclesiastical 
literature.  This  is  a  fact  that  must  excite  thoughts  in  the 
mind  of  a  friend  of  mission  work,  for  the  Nubians  belong  to  a 
large  national  and  linguistic  family,  formerly  called  the  Nuba- 
Fulah  group,  but  now  the  Sudanese,  to  whom  belong  also  the 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  365 

Ga  and  Tshi  of  the  Gold  Coast  and  the  Ewe  of  the  Slave 
Coast.  Thus  one  member  of  this  national  family,  which  is  to- 
day sunk  in  the  deepest  heathenism,  had,  more  than  a  thou- 
sands years  ago,  a  Christian  royal  house  and  a  native  Christian 
literature. 

Under  the  ambitious  and  brilliant  dynasty  of  Muhammad 
AH  a  period  of  Egyptian  conquests  began.  It  was  the  ambi- 
tion of  Muhammad  Ali  and  of  Ismail  to  found  a  greater 
Egypt  up  to  the  Equator.  The  former  pushed  in  1819  into 
the  Sudan,  beyond  Khartum.  The  chief  result  of  this  invasion 
was  an  increase  of  the  detestable  slave-trade,  which  had  al- 
ready been  carried  on  in  the  Sudan  for  a  long  time  on  a  large 
scale.  Now,  under  Egyptian  rule,  it  became  the  staple  trade 
of  the  country.  Military  posts  were  the  centres  from  which 
to  hunt  slaves  for  service  in  the  army,  and  the  Nile  became 
the  favourite  route  of  the  slave-dealers.  Khartum  was  the 
chief  slave  market.  Up  to  1853  Egyptian  rule  extended  no 
further  than  to  a  point  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  south 
of  Khartum,  so  that  the  negroes  living  on  the  upper  White 
Nile  and  on  the  Bahr-el-Ghazal  were  not  much  troubled.  In 
1853,  however,  a  European  trading  expedition  pushed  further 
up  the  river,  to  be  followed  by  others.  Stations  were  estab- 
lished, which  were  protected  by  armed  Arabs  and  Nubians. 
Within  a  few  years  the  European  traders  sold  their  stations 
to  Arab  agents,  who  were  called  Khartumers,  because  they 
had  their  headquarters  in  that  city.  They  became  small  in- 
dependent potentates,  and  never  was  there  a  greater  curse  let 
loose  upon  a  country.  By  means  of  their  armed  robber  bands 
they  plundered  the  native  races  or  stirred  them  up  one  against 
the  other. 

When  Ismail  Pasha  was  made  viceroy  in  1863,  he  saw  that 
it  was  impossible  to  rule  over  the  Sudan  b}^  Egyptian  agents. 
He  accordingly  granted  to  Sir  Samuel  Baker  unlimited  powers 
over  the  territory  to  the  south  of  Gondokoro,  which  now 
forms  part  of  the  Uganda  Protectorate.  Baker  arrived  in 
Gondokoro  in  1871,  and  formally  added  it  to  the  newly  formed 
province  of  Ismailia.     The  following  year  he  declared  Unyoro 


366     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

an  Egyptian  province,  and  entered  into  friendly  relations  with 
Mtesa,  the  king  of  Uganda.  For  a  short  time  the  slave-trade 
was  abolished  through  his  energetic  action,  but  between  1873, 
when  he  returned  to  Cairo,  and  the  year  following,  when 
General  Gordon  came  for  the  first  time,  the  trade  revived. 
First  as  governor  of  the  province  of  Ismailia,  and  then  as 
governor-general  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan  (1874-1879),  Gordon 
was  most  earnestly  occupied  in  introducing  order  into  the 
vast  waste  territory,  and  above  all  he  endeavoured  thoroughly 
to  root  out  the  slave-trade.  But  his  success,  also,  was  only 
transient. 

The  immorality  and  corruption  of  the  Egyptian  officials  had 
caused  great  dissatisfaction  among  the  classes  of  the  people 
that  were  engaged  in  agriculture  and  commerce.  The  extor- 
tion of  the  tax-gatherers  had  impoverished  many.  The 
sporadic  attempts  to  suppress  the  slave-trade  had  made  the 
nomad  races  restless,  since  their  chief  source  of  income  lay  in 
that  trade.  All  these  disturbed  interests  were  only  waiting 
for  a  strong  man  to  lead  them  in  open  rebellion.  And  into 
this  powder-magazine  there  fell  the  spark  of  religious  fanat- 
icism. The  son  of  a  Dongola  carpenter.  Sheikh  Muhammad 
Achraed,  declared  himself,  in  August,  1881,  during  the  fast  of 
Karaadan,  to  be  the  promised  Mahdi.  On  the  3d  of  Novem- 
ber, 1883,  he  annihilated  the  Egyptian  army,  ten  thousand 
strong,  led  by  Hicks  Pasha.  All  hope  for  the  Egyptian  Sudan 
was  then  abandoned.  In  this  serious  crisis,  Gordon  was  again 
sent  thither  to  save  what  remained.  But  unfortunately  the 
force  placed  at  his  disposal  was  not  strong  enough.  When 
the  wild  hordes  of  the  Mahdi  stormed  Khartum  on  the  24th 
of  January,  1885,  he  fell.  The  Mahdi  himself,  indeed,  died  in 
June  of  the  same  year,  but  the  khalif  whom  he  had  appointed, 
Abdullah,  a  Baggara  of  the  Taaisha  tribe  from  Darfur,  carried 
out  the  Mahdi's  plans  with  perhaps  even  greater  bloodthirst- 
iness.  This  reign  of  terror  lasted  for  twelve  years,  and  is  one 
of  the  blackest  chapters  in  the  history  of  narrow-minded  Mos- 
lem fanaticism,  in  all  its  hatred  of  culture.  The  tribes  of  the 
Nile  Yalley  were  decimated.     Executions,  massacres  and  con- 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  367 

fiscations  were  the  order  of  the  day.  The  inhabitants  of  en- 
tire districts,  e.  g.,  along  the  Blue  Kile,  were  compelled  to 
settle  in  Omdurman,  which  was  thus  increased  to  a  city  with 
a  population  of  400,000.  The  horrors  of  the  slave-trade  were 
never  more  shocking  than  under  this  Khalif's  rule.  At  length, 
in  1898,  an  Anglo-Egyptian  army  under  Kitchener  succeeded 
in  defeating  the  Khalif,  and  putting  an  end  to  his  rule. 

The  immense  Egyptian  Sudan  was,  by  an  arrangement  not 
quite  easy  to  understand,  placed  under  the  joint  government 
of  England  and  Egypt.  It  became  practically  an  English 
province,  governed  at  the  cost  of  Egypt.  There  was  great 
enthusiasm  among  the  supporters  of  the  Anglican  Mission  for 
following  up  with  mission  work  the  undertaking  of  General 
Gordon,  who  was  greatly  venerated  in  evangelical  circles. 
He  himself  had,  from  18Y4  to  1879,  urgently  requested  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  to  begin  work  in  the  Egyptian 
Sudan.  After  his  death  this  society  received  subscriptions 
amounting  to  £3,000  for  establishing  a  "  Gordon  Memorial 
Mission."  The  first  attempts  in  this  direction,  however,  Gen- 
eral Haig's  journey  to  Suakim  and  Hodeida  in  1886,  and  that 
of  the  medical  missionary,  Dr.  F.  J.  Harpur  to  Suakim,  proved 
abortive.     The  time  had  not  yet  come. 

But  when  the  British  flag  floated  over  the  Sudan  in  1898, 
the  enthusiasm  was  renewed.  The  Church  Missionary  Society 
was  now  ready  to  begin  a  mission  on  a  grand  scale.  The 
United  Presbyterians  also  began  to  push  their  work  forward 
into  the  Sudan.  But  just  then  a  new,  and  for  a  time  insuper- 
able, difficulty  arose,  namely,  the  policy  of  the  English  gov- 
ernment, which  strictly  prohibited  missions  in  the  Moslem 
Sudan.  The  reason  for  this  as  propounded  by  Lord  Cromer 
is  so  instructive  that  we  must  give  his  words  as  they  appeared 
in  the  Blue  Book,  1905,  No.  1,  April : 

"  In  the  northern  portion  of  the  Sudan  ...  it  would 
not,  for  the  present,  be  possible,  without  incurring  great 
danger,  to  adopt  so  liberal  and  tolerant  a  policy  as  that  pur- 
sued in  Egypt.  The  population  of  the  Sudan  generally  is  as 
yet  far  too  ignorant  and  uncivilized  to  be  able  to  distinguish 


368     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

between  the  action  of  the  British  government  in  their  corporate 
capacity,  and  that  of  an  individual  European,  whether  of  Brit- 
ish or  any  other  nationality.  If  free  scope  were  allowed  to 
missionary  enterprise,  it  would  not  only  be  unproductive  of  re- 
sult, but  would  also  create  a  feeling  of  resentment,  culminating 
possibly  in  actual  disturbance,  which,  far  from  advancing, 
would  almost  certainly  throw  back  that  work  of  civilization, 
which  all  connected  with  the  country,  whether  or  not  con- 
nected with  missionary  enterprise,  have  so  much  at  heart. 

"Under  these  circumstances,  I  have  stated  in  my  annual  re- 
port for  1902  that  both  Sir  Keginald  Wingate  and  myself  were 
of  opinion  that  '  the  time  was  still  distant  when  mission  work 
could  with  safety  and  advantage  be  permitted  amongst  the 
Moslem  population  of  the  Sudan.'  "We  both  remain  of  that 
opinion.  It  is  impossible  at  present  to  assign  any  precise 
limit  to  the  duration  of  the  existing  restrictions.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  British  missionary  enterprise  those  restric- 
tions are  so  far  practically  unimportant,  in  that  a  large  field 
of  activity,  which  they  have  as  yet,  owing  to  want  of 
funds,  been  unable  to  occupy,  has  been  opened  out  to  them  ia 
the  southern  portion  of  the  Sudan.  To  a  certain  very  limited 
extent,  an  exception  to  the  application  of  the  principle  above 
enunciated  has  been  made  within  the  second  zone,  in  the  case 
of  Khartum.  The  population  of  that  town  is  not  wholly 
Moslem.  There  are  many  Christians  resident,  of  various  de- 
nominations. Moreover,  being  the  seat  of  government,  the 
action  of  any  missionary  bodies  can  be  carefully  supervised  ; 
whilst  the  Moslem  population,  being  in  immediate  touch  with 
the  governing  authorities,  can  more  readily  comprehend  the 
policy  adopted  than  those  residing  in  the  outlying  provinces. 
Further,  an  active  demand  for  education,  which  the  govern- 
ment is  unable  to  meet  adequately  from  its  own  resources, 
exists,  on  the  part  of  both  Moslems  aud  Christians.  Under 
these  circumstances  permission  has  been  given  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  mission  schools  at  Khartum.  It  is  for  the  heads 
of  these  schools  to  decide  on  the  amount  of  religious  instruc- 
tion which  shall  be  afforded  to  the  pupils.     The  duty  of  the 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  369 

government  is  limited  to  providing  that  any  Moslem  parent, 
or  parent  of  some  religious  denomination  other  than  that 
under  whose  auspices  the  school  has  been  instituted,  shall 
clearly  understand  the  conditions  under  which  secular  instruc- 
tion is  imparted,  before  he  sends  his  child  to  the  school.  Reg- 
ulations having  this  object  in  \iew  have  accordingly  been 
framed." 

This  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  government  has  greatly 
added  to  the  difficulty  of  establishing  the  mission  securely  in 
the  Sudan.  Let  us  take  up  separately  the  Arabian  Sudan,  ex- 
tending as  far  south  as  the  latitude  of  Fashoda  (10°  N.),  and 
the  heathen  Sudan,  extending  southwards  to  the  Protectorate 
of  Uganda. 

(a)  There  has  been  a  great  immigration  into  the  Arabian 
Sudan  since  the  English  occupation,  including  Christians  from 
Egypt  and  Syria.  The  government  has  opened  up  the  coun- 
try by  the  construction  of  a  railway  system  from  Assuan  via 
Wadi  Haifa  to  Khartum,  and  from  Atbara,  near  Berber  on 
the  Nile,  to  Port  Sudan,  near  Suakim,  on  the  Ked  Sea ;  and 
also  by  the  establishment  of  a  regular  steamboat  service.  As 
a  great  number  of  officials  and  educated  men  of  all  kinds  is 
required,  immigration  is  liberally  encouraged.  Khartum  is 
gradually  developing  into  a  civilized  city,  and  Haifa,  Atbara, 
Port  Sudan  and  other  towns  are  beginning  to  flourish.  As 
there  were  many  Protestants  from  Egypt  and  Syria  among 
the  immigrants,  the  United  Presbyterians  felt  themselves  in 
duty  bound  to  follow  them  and,  especially,  to  gather  them  into 
congregations  and  associations.  They  are  mostly  young  people. 
The  Nile  Synod  in  Egypt  regards  the  Sudan  as  its  mission 
field,  and  has  already  sent  two  of  its  ordained  ministers 
thither.  The  Presbyterians  have  established  a  main  station 
at  Khartum,  and  have  begun  educational  work  on  a  modest 
scale.  The  latter  is  hampered  by  the  government  regulation 
that  Muhammadans  must  signify  their  willingness  in  writing, 
before  their  children  may  attend  Christian  religious  instruc- 
tion. The  Church  Missionary  Society  has  also  a  station  in 
Khartum,  but,  since  the  death  of  the  medical  missionary,  Dr. 


37°     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Hall,  who  was  stationed  there,  the  staff  has  been  very  weak. 
This  mission  is  distinguished  by  having  a  large,  well-attended 
girls'  school  in  a  roomy  house. 

(5)  While  the  English  government  thought  it  right  to  ex- 
clude Christian  missions  from  Moslem  Sudan,  it  not  only 
threw  open  the  heathen  part  of  the  country  south  of  Fashoda, 
but  even  heartily  invited  the  missions  to  enter.  Lord  Cromer, 
in  writing  to  the  English  clergyman,  Eev.  E.  Maclnnes,  in 
December,  1904,  said  that  the  Sudan  government  would  wel- 
come the  cooperation  of  the  missionaries  in  the  work  of  civi- 
lization. Two  societies  accepted  the  invitation.  The  United 
Presbyterians  settled  in  Dolaib,  on  the  Sobat,  sixty  miles 
above  Fashoda.  Naturally  their  work  in  this  completely  new 
field  is  not  yet  highly  developed.  Dolaib  lies  in  the  district 
of  Shilluk  or  Shulla.  Comparatively  near  at  hand  are  the 
tribal  lands  of  the  Northern  Dinka,  the  Nuehr,  the  Barun  and 
the  Any  ok,  each  with  a  more  or  less  distinct  dialect,  so  that 
each  tribe  requires  at  least  one  main  station,  and  the  literary 
work  promises  to  be  very  heavy.  Unfortunately  Arabic,  and 
with  it  Islam,  is  making  great  progress,  and  both  are  encour- 
aged by  the  government.  Further,  it  is  a  very  unhealthful 
country,  so  that  a  frequent  change  among  the  missionaries 
seems  to  be  unavoidable.  It  is  considered  desirable  that  each 
of  them  should  spend  three  months  of  every  year  in  a  more 
healthful  climate  (F.  K.  Giffen,  "  The  Egyptian  Sudan,"  New 
York,  1906). 

In  January,  1906,  the  Church  Missionary  Society  began 
boldly  to  push  forward  a  thousand  miles  south  of  Khartum 
into  the  region  of  the  White  Nile,  which  is  very  flat,  and 
therefore  exposed  to  the  great  overflowings  of  the  river,  and, 
eighty  miles  south  of  the  unhealthfully  situated  English  mili- 
tary post  at  Bor,  three  stations  followed  one  another  in  quick 
succession,  Melwal  and  Meluk  on  the  Nile,  and  G walla,  near 
Sheikh  Bior,  inland  in  an  easterly  direction.  For  this  work 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  has  ample  funds  and  a  staff  of 
three  ordained  missionaries,  one  doctor  and  two  laymen.  All 
three  stations  lie  in  the  territory  of  the  Southern  Dinka.     It 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  371 

was  hoped  that  a  good  beginning  might  be  made  in  using  a 
Dinka  translation  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Luke,  which 
had  been  prepared  by  Professor  Mittelrutzer  of  Bozen,  who 
had  made  use  of  the  writings  of  Roman  Catholic  missionaries. 
Eut  all  the  work  had  to  be  done  over  again,  because  the 
dialect  of  the  Southern  Dinka  differs  considerably  from  that 
in  which  the  translation  was  written.  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  the  population  of  this  region  is  very  small.  The  mission 
enjoys  an  advantage,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  fact  that  the 
Dinka  as  well  as  the  Bari,  their  neighbours,  have  a  dislike  of 
the  Muharamadans,  bordering  on  hatred,  on  account  of  the 
former  slave  raids.  Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any  priestly 
class  among  them.  There  is  a  great  lack  of  timber,  stone  and 
brick-clay  for  building  purposes,  so  that  there  will  be  consid- 
erable diflBculty  in  building  solid  and  sanitary  houses.  The 
English  are  planning  gigantic  operations  for  developing  the 
country.  They  are  about  to  make  a  new  channel  500  miles 
long  right  across  the  country,  to  carry  off  the  water  from  a 
section  of  the  Nile,  which  is  blocked  by  the  much  feared  sudd 
(papyrus  islands),  that  hinders  navigation  and  causes  enor- 
mous floods  {IntelligenceT^  1906,  pp.  62  ff.,  568  ff.). 

{B)  Abyssinia 
At  the  time  of  the  Islamic  conquest  of  Northern  Africa, 
only  one  Christian  country  offered  determined  and  permanent 
resistance,  the  kingdom,  or  empire,  of  Abyssinia  (C.  Paul,  "  Ab- 
essinien  und  die  evangelische  Kirche."  R.  "W.  Dietels,  "Mis- 
sionsstunden."  Heft  5,  2te  Auflage,  Dresden,  1905).  At  the 
beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century  Frumentius  and  ^desius, 
Christians  from  Phoenicia,  brought  the  Gospel  to  Abyssinia, 
having  been  shipwrecked  on  the  rocky  coast.  In  326  A.  d. 
the  former  became  the  first  bishop  of  the  country,  having 
been  appointed  by  Athanasius.  During  the  fifth  century 
many  monks  went  thither  from  Egypt,  continuing  the  Chris- 
tianizing of  the  inhabitants ;  by  the  end  of  the  century  the 
royal  family  appears  to  have  embraced  Christianity.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  connection  with  Egypt,  the  Monophysite  heresy, 


372     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

which  was  prevalent  there,  was  adopted  in  Abyssinia  as  the 
authorized  faith,  and  has  remained  so  to  the  present  day. 
Thus  the  Abyssinian  Church,  hidden  away  in  the  interior  of 
Africa,  was  removed  from  the  influences  of  the  general  ecclesi- 
astical development.  Even  the  influence  of  the  doctrinally 
allied  Koptic  Church  declined  in  proportion  as  that  Church 
became  spiritually  impoverished.  Yet  Abyssinia  was  not  left 
to  herself.  For  centuries  she  was  obliged  to  defend  her  polit- 
ical and  ecclesiastical  independence  against  the  repeated  and 
often  fierce  assaults  of  Muhammadanism.  Though  sometimes 
brought  to  the  verge  of  ruin  in  these  wars,  she  was  yet,  in  the 
end,  able  to  maintain  that  independence.  Beginning  with  the 
sixteenth  century  a  new  conflict  arose,  which  was  almost  more 
fateful  for  her  culture  and  her  religion.  The  countless  hordes 
of  the  savage  Galla,  "  barbarians,"  broke  in  upon  her  from 
the  interior  of  Africa,  occupying  first  the  parts  of  the  country 
lying  near  to  the  boundary,  and  then  pushing  on  as  far  as 
Gojara,  Shoa  and  Amhara,  right  into  the  heart  of  Abyssinia, 
the  very  existence  of  which  was  thus  endangered.  Only  after 
decades  of  tedious  wars  did  the  Abyssinians  assert  their 
supremacy  by  forcing  the  Galla  into  submission,  or  at  least 
making  them  tributary.  Those  of  the  Galla  who  settled  in 
Abyssinia  proper  were  Christianized  during  the  following 
centuries.  But  if  the  Christian  culture  of  the  country  had 
before  this  been  poor,  it  became  still  more  degenerate  under 
the  influence  of  so  many  superficially  Christianized  heathen, 
who  introduced  their  old  heathen  negro  practices  into  Chris- 
tian worship.  It  seems  miraculous  that,  in  spite  of  all  these 
drawbacks,  the  three  and  a  half  million  Abyssinians  of  the 
present  day  are  mostly  Christians. 

It  was  only  owing  to  her  isolated  position  that  Abyssinia 
Avas  able  to  maintain  herself  intact.  Like  a  gigantic,  un- 
broken rampart,  the  outrunners  of  the  Abyssinian  Alps  rise 
from  the  narrow,  sandy,  burning  and  unhealthful  plains  that 
border  on  the  Red  Sea.  "Within  fifty  miles  inland  from 
Massowa,  the  chief  harbour  on  the  Red  Sea,  the  only  road  of 
any  size,  running  from  the  coast,  rises  to  a  height  of  more 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  373 

thaa  7,500  feet.  Beyond  the  coast  range,  which  rises  to  a 
height  of  13,700  feet,  a  high  and  undulating  table-land  stretches 
out  towards  the  west.  In  the  east  its  average  height  is 
10,500  feet,  while  in  the  west  and  north  it  attains  an  altitude 
of  between  6,200  and  8,200  feet.  Deep  cut  valleys,  some  of 
them  lying  3,000  feet  below  the  level  of  the  table-land,  in 
which  wild  mountain  torrents  rush  through  an  almost  impene- 
trable tropical  undergrowth  of  primeval  forests,  cut  up  into 
isolated  rocky  islands  the  immense  land,  more  than  half  as 
great  as  the  entire  German  Empire,  Above  the  table  land 
tower  numberless,  precipitous,  flat-topped  mountains,  the 
"  Amba,"  so  characteristic  of  Abyssinia,  which,  though  ap- 
proached with  diificulty,  are  well  watered  and  covered  with 
abundant  vegetation.  Still  more  lofty,  reaching  into  the 
region  of  eternal  snow,  are  the  Alps  of  Siraen  with  the  E.as 
Dashan  (14,200  feet).  In  other  parts  of  the  country  single 
peaks  rise  to  a  height  of  over  13,000  feet.  On  the  eastern  and 
northern  borders,  across  which  the  most  dangerous  of  the 
enemies  of  Abyssinia  threaten,  the  country  is  difficult  of  ap- 
proach, and  to  the  west,  also,  protection  is  afforded  by  wide- 
spread, fever-breeding  swamps,  the  "  Quolla  "  of  evil  fame. 
Thus  this  immense,  inland  rock-island  has  been  enabled  to 
maintain  a  separate  historic  existence  and  a  civilization 
peculiar  to  itself,  in  the  very  heart  of  Africa.  Quite  apart 
from  the  point  of  view  of  missionary  work,  this  interesting 
country  has  constantly  claimed  the  attention  of  Europe  dur- 
ing the  last  half  century.  "We  are  compelled  by  the  fact  that 
its  political  history  is  so  closely  interwoven  with  the  record 
of  missions  within  its  borders,  to  deal  more  in  detail  with 
that  ever  changing,  romantic  and  exciting  history. 

In  1855  Kasa,  an  energetic  chief  of  Amhara,  who  had  risen 
from  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  tribe,  succeeded  in  subduing  the 
rest  of  the  chiefs,  including  the  Emperor  of  Gondar,  who  was 
emperor  only  in  name.  He  had  himself  crowned  as  Negus 
Negust,  taking  the  title  of  Theodore  II  (1855-1868).  At  first 
his  reign  was  just  and  strong,  many  reforms  being  introduced. 
But,  being  passionately  proud  of  his  army,  he  increased  it  to 


374     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

nearly  150,000  men,  far  too  large  a  standing  army  for  the 
needs  of  the  country,  and  a  heavy  burden  on  the  poverty- 
stricken  people.  As  he  was  also  intent  on  arming  his  soldiers 
with  better  weapons,  and  spared  no  expense  in  the  purchase 
of  rifles  and  cannon,  he  imposed  greater  and  greater  taxes. 
This  gave  rise  to  rebellions  in  province  after  province,  which 
he  had  to  be  constantly  suppressing  with  much  bloodshed. 
The  disturbed  state  of  the  country  led  to  increasing  savagery 
on  the  part  of  the  people,  the  soldiery,  and,  not  least,  of 
Theodore  himself.  Further,  thinking  himself  despised  and  in- 
sulted by  the  European  Powers  when  he  sought  to  enter  into 
treaties  with  them  as  an  equal,  he  developed  more  and  more 
into  a  bloodthirsty  African  tyrant.  In  the  autumn  of  1867 
he  imprisoned  all  Europeans  living  in  his  country,  ambassadors, 
travellers  and  missionaries  in  the  gloomy  fortress  of  Magdala. 
As  all  endeavours  to  treat  with  him  for  the  release  of  the 
prisoners  failed,  a  military  expedition  of  16,000  men  under 
General  (afterwards  Lord)  Napier  was  dispatched  in  the 
spring  of  1868  to  Abyssinia.  The  expedition  pushed  on  to 
Magdala,  whereupon  Theodore  set  some  of  his  prisoners  free 
and  sued  for  peace.  But  the  fortress  was  taken  by  storm  on  the 
13th  of  April,  and  it  was  found  that  Theodore  had  shot  himself. 
Thereupon  the  British  released  all  the  prisoners  and  retired. 

Some  years  of  civil  war  ensued,  there  being  several  aspirants 
to  the  throne,  until,  in  1871,  one  of  them  mounted  the  throne 
with  the  aid  of  England,  taking  the  name  of  John.  He 
reigned  as  Negus  from  1871  to  1889.  During  his  eventful  reign 
three  fearful  storms  threatened  the  very  existence  of  this  much 
assailed  land.  Egypt  had  for  a  thousand  years  been  making 
attempts  to  subdue  Abyssinia.  She  had  at  that  time  extended 
her  power  southwards  into  the  heart  of  Africa,  and  her  armies 
now  made  an  attack  from  the  north  and  the  southeast,  but 
they  were  routed,  first  at  Gundet,  in  1875,  and  then  at  Gura, 
in  1876.  Peace  was  concluded  in  1879,  and  Egypt  has  never 
again  invaded  Abyssinia. 

In  1882  Italy  occupied  a  part  of  the  Eed  Sea  coast,  in  1885 
annexing  Massowa,  which  was  necessary  to  Abyssinia  as  a 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  375 

point  of  access  to  the  sea.  War  broke  out  between  the  two 
countries.  A  treaty  was  made  in  1889,  in  the  reign  of  John's 
successor,  Menelik,  who  acknowledged  Italy's  protectorate. 
But  Menelik  soon  repented  of  this  concession,  which  had  been 
made  while  he  did  not  feel  secure  on  his  throne,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  renew  the  contest.  After  his  general,  Eas  Mangasha, 
had  suffered  several  defeats,  Menelik  succeeded  in  nearly  an- 
nihilating the  Italian  army  under  General  Baratieri  on  the 
1st  of  March,  1896,  in  a  bloody  battle,  in  which  the  Italians 
lost  250  officers  and  7,000  men.  Peace  was  then  made,  and 
the  Mareb  was  fixed  as  the  boundary  between  the  Italian 
colony  of  Eritrea  and  Abyssinia.  While  engaged  in  this  con- 
flict with  Italy,  the  Negus  John  was  attacked  in  the  rear  by  a 
more  formidable  enemy.  The  Mahdists  rushed  in  from  the 
northwest  with  furious  fanaticism,  destroying  all  before  them 
with  fire  and  sword.  John  led  his  army  against  them,  defeat- 
ing them  utterly  in  a  two  days'  battle  near  Metammeh  (or 
Metamineh)  on  the  river  Kalabat.  He  himself,  however,  was 
slain,  Menelik  of  Sboa,  a  brave  and  wise  man,  seized  the 
throne,  and  was  crowned  Negus  Negust  with  great  pomp  in 
the  spring  of  1890. 

As  we  are  concerned  particularly  with  the  history  of  mis- 
sionary undertakings,  the  religious  affairs  of  Abyssinia  are  of 
special  importance.  At  the  head  of  the  Church  stands  the 
Abuna  or  Abba  Salama  (Father  of  Peace),  who  must  always 
be  a  Koptic  priest,  consecrated  for  this  office  by  anointing  at 
the  hands  of  the  Patriarch  of  Cairo.  Although  differing  in 
race  and  language  from  the  people  of  the  country,  he  possesses 
great  authority  by  virtue  of  his  office,  even  the  position  of 
Negus  depending  upon  his  favour  in  many  a  critical  juncture. 
In  addition  to  a  numerous  priesthood  (mostly  married  men), 
there  is  a  still  greater  number  of  monks  and  nuns  living  in 
large,  and  sometimes  celebrated,  monasteries  and  convents,  as 
is  the  case  in  the  Koptic  Church.  These  have  the  guardian- 
ship of  the  small  remnant  of  ecclesiastical  learning,  and,  a  re- 
markable fact  when  we  consider  the  lif elessness  of  the  Church, 
are  engaged  every  now  and  then  in  bitter  theological  warfare. 


37^     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Such  a  contest  on  the  question  whether  there  had  been  a  two- 
fold birth  of  Christ,  namely,  His  coming  forth  from  the 
Father  and  His  birth  in  Bethlehem,  or  a  threefold,  the  de- 
scending of  the  Holy  Spirit  upon  Him  at  His  baptism  being 
the  third  birth,  engaged  the  attention  of  the  entire  Church  at 
times  during  the  last  century,  and  had  its  influence  on  the  home 
policy  of  the  country.  There  are  numberless  churches,  mostly 
on  hills  under  the  shade  of  trees,  pleasant  structures  of  modest 
appearance,  built  of  clay  and  with  thatched  roofs.  Their  pe- 
culiarity is  that  they  are  mostly  round,  and  are  divided  into 
three  parts,  an  outer  court,  a  holy  place,  and  a  holy  of  holies, 
as  was  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  The  outer  court,  which 
runs  round  the  main  building,  is  the  place  in  which  the  people 
assemble,  and  serves  at  night  time  as  a  lodging  for  shelterless 
travellers.  In  the  holy  of  holies  there  is  always  a  Avooden 
ark,  made  like  the  "  ark  of  the  covenant "  in  the  chief  church 
at  Axura,  which  is  regarded  as  the  most  sacred  possession  of 
the  Church.  In  the  services  the  ancient  sacred  Geez  lan- 
guage is  used,  now  a  dead  language,  not  understood  by  the 
common  people.  There  is  no  preaching.  The  baptism  of  boys 
takes  place  on  the  fortieth  day  after  birth,  that  of  girls  on  the 
eightieth  day.  At  the  same  time  the  children  receive  the 
holy  communion.  There  are  innumerable  church  festivals  and 
fast  days.  Apart  from  the  chief  church  festivals  and  the 
Sabbath  there  are  one  hundred  saints'  days,  so  that  there  are 
one  hundred  and  eighty  festivals  of  one  kind  or  another  in  the 
course  of  a  year.  The  fasts  are  as  a  rule  rigorously  observed, 
and  there  are  two  hundred  fast  days  in  a  year  for  one  reason 
or  another.  The  chief  virtue  of  their  religion  consists  in  the 
observance  of  these  fasts  and  in  the  worship  of  the  Saints,  of 
the  Virgin  Mary  above  all.  Circumcision  is  the  rule.  Polyg- 
amy, though  forbidden  and  punished  with  exclusion  from  the 
holy  communion,  is  nevertheless  very  common. 

In  addition  to  the  Christian  Abyssinians,  numerous  other 
races  or  fragments  of  races  dwell  in  Abyssinia,  whose  religions 
are  most  varied,  as,  for  instance,  the  Kamants  and  Zalanes. 
The  Falasha,  "  exiles,"  are  of  some  importance  from  the  point  of 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  377 

view  of  the  missions.  From  the  earliest  times  of  which  we 
have  knowledge  there  has  been  much  Semitic  immigration. 
The  royal  family  proudly  traces  its  descent  from  Menelik,  a 
reputed  son  of  Solomon  and  the  Queen  of  Sheba.  For  cen- 
turies the  Jews  have  had  independent  princes  in  the  country, 
who  have  even  sometimes  usurped  the  throne.  This  is  the 
source  of  the  introduction  of  such  things  as  the  ark  into  the 
churches,  and  of  the  rite  of  circumcision  into  Abyssinian  re- 
ligious customs.  The  Falasha  were  not,  as  was  generally  sup- 
posed, immigrant  Jews,  but  Judaized  remnants  of  the  aborig- 
inal pre-Semitic,  Hamitic  Cushites ;  for  the  vulgar  tongue  is 
to  the  present  day  a  pre-Semitic  dialect,  like  that  of  the  Agaw 
or  Agam,  who  also  belong  to  the  aborigines  of  the  country. 
The  Falasha  live  scattered  over  many  provinces  of  Abyssinia, 
being  most  numerous  in  mountainous  Simen  and  in  the  region 
to  the  north  and  northwest  of  the  lake  of  Tana.  They  are 
industrious  farmers,  clever  also  in  the  building  of  houses,  yet 
in  other  respects  even  more  ignorant  than  the  Christian  Abys- 
sinians.  Before  the  missionaries  came  into  touch  with  them, 
they  had  hardly  any  books,  for  instance,  none  of  the  Talraudio 
literature.  In  fact  they  seem  never  to  have  been  under  the 
influence  of  the  later  Jewish  type,  the  rabbinical.  On  the 
contrar}'',  there  are  among  them  traces  of  the  ancient  Ca- 
naanitic  Astarte  worship.  They  worship  Sanballat  as  the 
"  Queen  of  Heaven,"  expecting  riches  and  prosperity  from  her. 
There  is  amongst  them  a  most  remarkable  mixture  of  ancient 
Jewish,  Christian,  and  heathen  African  customs.  From  Juda- 
ism they  have  their  priests,  their  high  priest,  and  the  blood 
offerings  in  their  mesgids  (synagogues),  as  well  as  the  painful 
observation  of  the  laws  of  purification.  From  Christianity 
there  came  the  curious  introduction  of  monks  and  nuns,  the 
monks  being  compelled  to  emasculate  themselves  on  entering 
the  order.  To  African  heathenism  the  prevalence  of  sorcery 
must  be  ascribed.  The  Falasha  are  generally  regarded  as  great 
sorcerers,  and  especially  as  rain-makers.^ 

^H.  A.  Stern,  "An  Account  of  a  Missionary  Tour  to  the  Falasha,"  London, 
1861.    J.  M.  Flad,  "A  Short  Description  of  the  Abyssinian  Jews,"  Basle,  1865. 


378     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

1.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  from  1830  to  18]i,3 
The  history  of  missions  in  Abyssinia  may  be  divided  into 
three  diverse  periods,  the  first  of  which  deals  with  the  most 
romantic  of  the  missionary  undertakings,  that,  namely,  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society.  It  caused  much  excitement  at 
the  time  in  Protestant  circles  in  England  and  Germany,  and 
has  given  Abyssinia  a  lasting  place  in  their  hearts.  We  make 
here  the  acquaintance  of  men  who  have  accomplished  great 
things  by  heroic  and  persevering  faith.  We  must  first  sketch 
in  a  few  broad  strokes  the  gloomy  and  stormy  political  back- 
ground, against  which  this  episode  stands  out  in  great  brilliancy. 
The  ancient  imperial  dynasty,  which  had  its  seat  in  Gondar, 
had  completely  lost  its  power  and  was  but  a  name.  The 
princes  or  kings  of  the  various  provinces  had  become  inde- 
pendent, and  engaged  in  war,  especially  with  one  another,  on 
their  own  account.  Sabagadis,  the  prince  of  Tigre,  was  at 
war  with  Ube,  the  prince  of  Amhara,  and  fell  in  battle  in 
1830.  His  two  sons,  Wolda  Michael  and  Cassai  endeavoured 
to  regain  the  kingdom  their  father  had  lost,  their  father's 
enemy,  Ube,  having  had  himself  crowned  king  of  Tigre  in  the 
ancient  capital,  Axum.  Wolda  Michael  was  attacked  by  his 
foes  and  murdered.  Cassai,  after  losing  several  battles,  was 
subdued  by  Ube,  and  when  he  subsequently  rebelled,  was  defin- 
itively deposed  and  imprisoned.  For  ten  years  Tigre  and 
Amhara  resounded  with  the  din  of  battle.  It  was  at  this 
juncture  that  the  Church  Missionary  Society  began  its  mission 
in  Abyssinia. 

Three  from  among  the  small  company  of  missionaries  sent 
out  deserve  special  mention,  Samuel  Gobat,  C.  W.  Isenberg, 
and  Dr.  Krapf.  All  three  had  enjoyed  a  similar  education. 
Originally  craftsmen,  the}'  had  come  into  the  mentally  active 
and  spiritually  stimulating  atmosphere  of  the  Basle  Mission 
House.  Their  stay  here,  in  Gobat's  case  much  interrupted  and 
cut  short  by  illness,  deepened  in  them  a  tolerant  evangelical 
spirit,  rooted  in  deep  piety  and  an  unshakeable  confidence  in 
God,  which  made  it  easy  for  them  to  enter  the  service  of  the 
evangelical  English  society,  and  to  feel  at  home  in  the  circles 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  379 

of  Anglican  piety.  All  three  of  them  were  decidedly  inter- 
ested, also,  in  scientific  studies,  Gobat,  especially,  having  had 
the  advantage  of  studying  for  some  years  in  Paris  under  the 
celebrated  orientalist,  De  Sacy.  All  three,  also,  attended  for 
some  time  the  Islington  College  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society,  after  which  they  were  ordained  by  an  Anglican  bishop. 
But  with  all  this  similarity  of  outward  circumstance,  there 
was  a  great  diversity  of  individual  character  and  talent  among 
them.  Yet  they  met  the  severe  difficulties,  which  greeted 
them  all  alike,  in  the  same  spirit  of  indefatigable  and  fearless 
determination,  being  often  led  thereby  to  the  verge  of  destruc- 
tion. Gobat  was  the  church  statesman,  who  with  tact  and 
energy  maintained  the  cause  of  his  divine  calling  before  the  su- 
perior authorities  of  the  Church  and  the  mighty  in  the  land, 
being  the  strongest  character  of  the  three,  in  spite  of  his  youth- 
fulness.  Isenberg  was  the  plodding  German  man  of  letters, 
whose  chief  joy  it  was  to  be  studying  foreign  languages,  writ- 
ing grammars  and  school-books,  and  laying  the  foundation  of 
a  Protestant  literature.  Krapf  was  the  man  of  bold  projects, 
full  of  brilliant  ideas  and  far-reaching  plans.  First  he 
fascinated  the  Protestant  public  with  his  scheme  of  the 
Apostles'  Road,  and  later  with  the  similar  plan  of  establishing 
a  chain  of  stations  right  across  Africa,  God  led  all  three  of 
them  later  in  a  marvellous  way.  Gobat,  as  Bishop  of  Jeru- 
salem, was  to  develop  the  full  weight  of  his  personality  ;  Isen- 
berg went  to  India  as  a  missionary,  and  devoted  his  talents  to 
further  study  and  to  educational  work ;  Krapf  became  the 
enthusiastic  pioneer  of  the  route  from  the  East  Coast  of  Africa 
into  the  pathless  interior.  But  Abyssinia  remained  for  all 
their  first  love,  the  country  of  romance  in  their  missionary 
work. 

The  attention  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  was  at- 
tracted to  Abyssinia  by  accident,  as  it  were.  An  Abyssinian 
monk,  Abu  Ruchi,  who  had  accompanied  the  English  explorer 
Bruce,  had  come  with  him  to  iilexandria,  and  was  there  per- 
suaded by  the  consul-general  of  France,  Asselin  de  Cherville,  to 
translate  the  Bible  into  the  Amharic  vulgar  tongue,  which  is 


380     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

at  the  present  time  most  commonly  spoken  in  Abyssinia. 
The  English  missionarj'-,  W.  Jowett,  found  his  manuscript  of 
9,539  pages  in  Alexandria,  and  bought  it  for  the  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society  (1818).  After  an  agreement  with  the 
Church  Missionary  Society,  the  Bible  Society  printed  portions 
of  the  translation,  especially  the  Gospels  and  the  Psalms. 
Then  the  question  arose  how  the  blessing  of  a  Bible  intelligible 
to  the  common  people  was  to  be  introduced  into  that  far-oflE 
land,  so  difficult  of  access  ;  how  this  "  talent  "  was  to  be  "  put 
into  the  bank."  The  two  young  missionaries,  Gobat  and 
Kugler,  received  a  commission  to  go  to  Abyssinia.  But  it  was 
three  years  before  they  found  an  opportunity  to  do  so  ;  at  the 
end  of  this  time,  however,  the  opportunity  seemed  all  the 
more  favourable  for  having  been  delayed.  In  Alexandria  they 
were  in  a  position  to  earn  the  deep  gratitude  of  the  ambassador 
of  Prince  Sabagadis,  so  that  they  were  permitted  to  accom- 
pany him  on  his  return  journey  to  Tigre  in  1830.  Sabagadis 
received  them  with  open  arms,  and,  at  first,  everything  seemed 
to  promise  well  both  in  the  Tigre  residence,  Adigrat,  and  in 
the  capital,  Gondar,  whither  Gobat  had  at  once  hurried. 
The  Bibles  in  Amharic  were  objects  of  interest,  and  every- 
body wanted  to  talk  with  Gobat  about  the  differences  be- 
tween his  faith  and  theirs.  However,  before  matters  could 
be  fully  settled,  the  civil  war  between  Sabagadis  and  Ube 
broke  out,  and  Sabagadis,  the  protector  of  the  mission,  fell  in 
battle.  Kugler,  unfortunately,  died  of  a  wound  he  had  re- 
ceived from  the  bursting  of  his  gun  while  he  was  hunting. 
Gobat  found  a  poor  enough  refuge  from  the  turmoil  in 
monasteries  high  up  in  the  mountains.  Finally,  in  1838, 
he  thought  it  advisable  to  leave  the  country  for  a  time. 

He  returned  a  year  later,  along  with  Isenberg  and  certain 
other  companions.  Isenberg  and  he  had  even  the  courage  to 
take  their  young  wives  with  them  into  this  inhospitable  land. 
The  civil  war  was  still  raging,  and  unbridled  license  reigned. 
Nevertheless  they  settled  down  in  Adowa,  intending  to  build 
suitable  houses  for  themselves.  But  this  they  could  not  accom- 
plish.    Gobat  fell  ill  of  a  tedious  abdominal  complaint,  which 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  381 

disabled  him  for  months  and  nearly  caused  his  death,  so  that 
finally  he  had  to  leave  the  country,  temporarily  a  broken  man. 
Isenberg,  who  had  in  the  meantime  been  reinforced  by  the 
arrival  of  Blumhardt  and  Ludwig  Krapf,  continued  his  work 
quietly  and  patiently.  But  several  of  the  higher  native 
clergy,  desiring  to  compass  his  ruin,  spread  false  reports,  in- 
citing the  prince  and  people  against  him.  Koman  Catholic 
missionaries  had,  also,  in  the  meantime,  come  into  the  coun- 
try, and  did  all  in  their  power  to  thrust  out  their  inconvenient 
rivals.  The  head  priest  in  Adowa,  Kiddani  Miriam,  at  length 
anathematized  the  missionaries,  delivering  their  souls  to  Satan, 
their  bodies  to  the  hyenas  and  their  property  to  the  robbers. 
"Whoever  approached  them  was  to  share  their  fate.  Ube  for- 
sook them,  and  the  Abuna  wrote  dryly  to  Isenberg,  "  The 
Abyssinians  are  a  people  that  do  not  desire  knowledge  and  have 
no  love  of  acquiring  it,  nor  can  they  be  convinced  that  you 
are  seeking  their  best  interests.  What  they  want  of  you  is 
that  you  should  give  them  of  your  wealth,  nothing  else." 
Naturally,  after  this  there  could  be  no  staying  there  and  they 
left  Tigre. 

In  the  meantime,  however,  doors  seemed  to  have  been 
opened  into  the  southern  province  of  Shoa,  the  prince  of 
which,  Sahela  Selassie,  had  given  the  missionaries  a  friendly 
invitation  to  come.  At  first  Dr.  Krapf  went  thither  alone, 
remaining  from  1839  to  1842  in  the  capital,  Ankober,  or  ac- 
companying the  prince  on  his  numerous  campaigns.  But 
here,  too,  all  hopes  proved  delusive.  The  prince  wanted  the 
missionaries  on  account  of  their  connection  with  England,  and 
for  the  sake  of  their  general  serviceability,  and  their  guns  and 
gunpowder,  but  he  had  neither  time  nor  appreciation  for  their 
work  as  missionaries.  Yet  Krapf  did  not  lose  hope.  In  1842 
he  travelled  to  Alexandria  to  bring  his  wife  thence  with  him 
to  Shoa.  Isenberg  and  another  young  missionary,  Miihleisen, 
joined  him.  But,  when  their  caravan  arrived  at  Tajura,  on 
the  route  to  Shoa,  they  were  met  with  the  strict  orders  of 
Selassie,  that  no  Englishman  was  henceforth  to  be  permitted 
to  enter  his  territory.     It  was  in  vain  that  they  waited  and 


382     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

implored  ;  the  mission,  which  had  been  entered  upon  with  such 
bright  hopes,  had  to  be  abandoned  in  1843,  never  to  be  re- 
newed by  the  Church  Missionary  Society.* 


2.  The  Second  Period — The  Falasha  Mission 
A  new  era  now  began  for  Abyssinia.  Theodore  seized  the 
crown,  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  country  came  under  his 
sway.  After  innumerable  civil  wars,  quiet  and  order  seemed 
to  have  settled  down  on  the  unfortunate  land.  A  new  Abuna 
had  arisen,  who,  while  still  a  Koptic  monk,  had  attended  the 
Anglican  mission  school  in  Cairo,  under  Lieder,  and  could 
therefore  be  expected  to  be  well  disposed  towards  the  mission. 
Gobat,  who  had  in  the  meantime  become  the  Anglican  Bishop 
of  Jerusalem,  had  an  ardent  desire  to  recommence  the  mis- 
sion in  the  land  of  his  first  labours.  Men  and  means  for  the 
purpose  were  placed  at  his  disposal  by  friends  in  Germany, 
and  especially  by  Father  Spittler  in  Basle,  who  had  just 
founded  the  St.  Chrischona  Pilgrims'  House  for  the  training 
of  lay  evangelists. 

King  Theodore  himself  lent  a  helping  hand  to  the  scheme 
of  renewing  the  mission  in  his  land.  He  placed  the  Abys- 
sinian monastery  in  Jerusalem  under  Gobat's  care,  and  so  be- 
gan a  friendly  correspondence  with  the  bishop,  who  thereupon 
offered  to  send  missionaries  to  Abyssinia.  Judging  by  his 
own  former  painful  experiences,  however,  he  feared  that  or- 
dained men  would  awaken  the  envy  of  the  Abyssinian  clergy, 
and  accordingly  suggested  that  the  missionaries  might  best 
be  chosen  from  among  laymen,  who  were  practicing  a  trade. 
These  men  were  to  establish  a  reputation  for  usefulness  by 

*  The  following  literary  results  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  Mission  of 
thirteen  years'  duration  are  extant  : — Isenberg,  "Amharic  Grammar,"  "Eng- 
lish-Amharic  and  Amharic-English  Dictionary,"  Amharic  handbooks  of  geog- 
raphy, history  and  religion,  "Samuel  Gobat,  Sein  Leben  und  Wirken,"  Basle, 
1884.  Gobat's  diaries  in  the  Evangelisehes  3fissions-Magazin,  1834,  Heft  1  and  2. 
Isenberg  and  Krapf,  "Journals,"  detailing  their  proceedings  in  the  kingdom  of 
Shoa,  London,  1843.  Isenberg,  "  Abessinien  und  die  evangelische  Mission," 
2  vols.,  1844.     Krapf,  "  Reisen  in  Ostafrika,"  2  vols. 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  383 

showing  a  general  readiness  to  be  of  service,  at  the  same  time 
thus  earning  their  living ;  they  were  also  to  keep  school  and 
to  preach  the  Gospel,  without,  however,  trying  to  form  con- 
gregations. Spittler  furnished  suitable  men  from  among  his 
Chrischona  Brethren.  In  1885  Dr.  Krapf  introduced  Martin 
Flad^  and  three  other  young  Brethren  to  the  court  of  King 
Theodore.  They  met  with  a  friendly  reception.  But  it  soon 
became  apparent  that  King  Theodore  had  formed  a  wrong 
idea  of  what  their  true  business  was.  He  wanted  European 
craftsmen,  who  would  be  able  above  all  else  to  cast  cannon, 
repair  rifles  and  make  gunpowder  for  him.  If  they  wanted 
to  do  a  little  school-teaching  as  well,  he  would  not  hinder 
them.  But  he  let  them  have  neither  the  time  nor  the  oppor- 
tunity to  prosecute  any  thorough  work  of  evangelization. 
Nor  was  there  any  improvement,  when,  in  1885,  four  more 
Chrischona  Brethren  arrived  under  the  leadership  of  Theodor 
"Waldraeyer.  The  unfortunate  Brethren  became  royal  can- 
noneers and  rifle  manufacturers,  and  their  servile  condition 
grew  worse  as  the  wild  passions  of  the  African  despot  gained 
the  ascendency. 

There  seemed  to  be  only  one  way  of  rendering  even  a  lim- 
ited amount  of  mission  work  possible.  The  missionaries  had 
come  into  frequent  touch  with  the  Falasha.^  Perhaps  Theo- 
dore would  permit  the  Gospel  to  be  preached  among  these 
Jews,  and  a  mission  to  be  begun  there.  The  reports  of  the 
capable,  self-sacrificing  Martin  Flad  induced  two  missionary 
societies,  doing  work  among  the  Jews,  to  undertake  this  task. 
The  great  London  Society  sent  H.  A.  Stern  to  Abyssinia  in 
1859.  He  was  a  talented  man,  but  was  incautious,  and  did 
not  sufficiently  consider  the  suspicious  temperament  of  Theo- 
dore. A  young  assistant  accompanied  Stern.  The  Scottish 
Jewish  Mission  sent  the  two  Chrischona  Brethren,  Staiger  and 
Brandeis.  With  one  exception  all  these  pioneers  were  Ger- 
mans.    Martin  Flad,  tired  of  being  cannoneer-in-chief  to  the 

*  J.  M.  Flad,  "  Zwolf  Jahre  in  Abessinien,"  2d  ed.,  Leipsic,  1887. 
*De    le    Eoi,    "  Geschichte    der    Evangelischen   Juden mission,"    Vol.    Ill, 
pp.  225-245.     C,  Paul,  "  Abessinien  und  die  Evangelische  Kirche,"  pp.  72-126. 


384     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

king,  entered  the  service  of  the  London  Society  and  became 
the  heart  and  soul  of  the  Falasha  Mission. 

Close  to  the  north  shore  of  the  beautiful  Lake  Tana,  in  the 
province  of  Dembea,  two  stations  were  established,  that  of  the 
London  Society  at  Kobula  near  Jada,  and  that  of  the  Scottish 
Society  at  Darua,  in  the  same  neighbourhood.  Their  success 
among  the  Falasha  was  astonishing.  On  the  21st  of  July, 
1862,  occurred  the  first  baptism,  of  twenty-two  persons,  fol- 
lowed on  the  4th  of  August  by  the  baptism  of  fourteen  others. 
In  little  more  than  five  years  there  was  a  company  of  212  con- 
verts, among  whom  there  were  some  splendid  characters, 
people  who,  for  the  sake  of  their  newly  found  faith,  bravely 
faced  severe  persecutions.  Prominent  among  them  was  the 
ardent  young  weaver,  Debtera  Paulus  Bern,  who  fearlessly 
confessed  the  truth  before  people  of  high  and  low  degree, 
and  eventually  became  the  leader  of  the  mission.  But  the 
storm-clouds  were  already  gathering  over  Abyssinia.  King 
Theodore  was  more  and  more  developing  a  ferocious  character. 
As  he  had  laid  his  own  country  waste,  so  he  let  his  anger 
loose  on  the  Europeans  living  in  his  dominions.  All  of  them, 
including  the  Chrischona  Brethren,  who  had  worked  so  hard 
for  him,  were  thrown  into  prison,  where  they  languished 
miserably  for  years.  Only  when  retribution  came  in  the 
shape  of  an  English  army  under  Sir  Kobert  Napier,  and  Theo- 
dore's fortress  at  Magdala  was  stormed,  did  relief  come  to  the 
prisoners.  The  horrors  of  Magdala^  (1867-1868)  caused  a 
great  commotion,  and  there  was  the  deepest  sympathy  with 
the  captives.  As  the  English  army  left  the  inhospitable  land, 
all  the  Europeans  in  the  country,  including  the  missionaries, 
joined  it. 

From  the  political  as  well  as  from  the  missionary  point  of 
view,  it  is  only  to  be  regretted  that  England,  which  at  that 
time  had  Abyssinia  completely  at  her  mercy,  let  the  country 
off  so  easily.  The  retiring  of  England  meant  the  death  of  the 
Protestant  Mission,  which  has  never  since  fully  recovered 
from  that  blow.  Martin  Flad,  however,  and  with  him  the 
1  "  Letters  from  the  Captives  in  Abyssinia,"  London,  1865. 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  385 

London  Society,  faithfully  held  fast  to  the  Falasha  Mission. 
No  less  than  eight  times  after  the  reign  of  terror  in  1868,  he 
undertook  the  wearisome  and  dangerous  journey  to  Abyssinia, 
to  see  if  the  door  would  not  be  opened  to  him,  or  at  any  rate 
to  take  counsel  with  the  native  assistants,  to  strengthen  their 
courage  and  to  supply  them  with  fresh  literature.  But,  even 
when  he  came,  in  1873,  as  the  bearer  of  an  official  letter  from 
the  Queen  of  England,  he  received  the  categorical  refusal  of 
the  new  king,  John,  to  permit  any  European  to  reside  in  his 
land.  So  all  that  could  be  done  was  to  manage  the  mission 
from  Europe,  as  far  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so.  Flad,  in  re- 
tirement in  beautiful  Kornthal  in  Wiirttemberg,  translated 
with  untiring  diligence  one  book  after  another  into  Amharic, 
or  carefully  revised  the  existing  Amharic  version  of  the  Bible. 
And  every  other  year  he  took  a  camel-load  of  newly-printed 
books  to  Kassala  or  Metemeh,  on  the  boundary  of  Abyssinia. 
Mission  work  proper  was  entirely  in  the  hands  of  converted 
Falasha.  It  is  both  astonishing  and  cheering  to  observe  what 
these  simple  people  have  accomplished.  Four  of  them  had 
been  prepared  for  this  service  in  the  Chrischona  Pilgrims* 
House  near  Basle,  and  they  did  credit  to  the  training  they 
had  received.  There  were  others,  also,  who  worked  without 
any  remuneration.  Nearly  every  year  accessions  and  baptisms 
could  be  reported.  In  1884  the  number  of  converts  was  be- 
tween eight  and  nine  hundred.  Then  a  series  of  storms 
swept  over  the  tender  plant.  The  Jesuits  incited  King  John 
to  destroy  all  Protestant  books,  and  any  who  were  found  pos- 
sessing such  had  to  expect  severe  punishment,  even  imprison- 
ment. After  this  the  hordes  of  Mahdist  dervishes  broke  in 
upon  the  country  and  laid  it  waste  as  far  as  Lake  Tana  and 
the  river  Takezze,  the  very  district  in  which  the  mission  had 
gained  a  footing.  The  terrified  inhabitants  were  compelled 
to  choose  between  Islam  and  death.  And  so  it  came  about 
that  many  of  the  Falasha  converts  died  the  martyr's  death. 
In  the  next  following  years  a  fearful  famine  visited  the  land, 
by  which  lYY  of  the  small  band  of  Falasha  Christians  were 
carried  away.    It  is  marvellous  that,  in  spite  of  all  these  visit- 


386     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

ations,  the  little  flame  of  Protestant  faith  in  Abyssinia  con- 
tinued to  burn.  Unfortunately  it  has  never  been  possible  for 
European  missionaries  to  make  a  new  and  energetic  beginning. 
Suspicion  of  the  entrance  of  European  influences  into  their 
country,  a  suspicion  unfortunately  only  too  well  justified, 
makes  the  Abyssinian  kings  obstinately  resist  even  mission 
work. 

3.  The  Swedish  National  Mission 
"While  storms  were  breaking  over  Negus  Theodore  and  the 
Protestant  missions,  a  new  mission  was  begun  in  the  northern 
Abyssinian  mountains,  which,  though  exposed  to  the  severest 
attacks,  and  experiencing  many  disappointments,  has  been 
carried  ]on  to  the  present  day  with  invincible  determination. 
The  Swedish  National  Missionary  Society  was  founded  in 
1861,  for  evangelistic  purposes  at  home.  It  soon  determined, 
however,  to  extend  its  operations  to  Abyssinia.  The  Swedes 
were  advised  by  Dr.  Krapf  to  begin  work  among  the  Galla  tribe, 
which  he  thought  the  most  promising  field  for  mission  work 
in  East  Africa.  But,  after  the  first  missionaries  had  arrived 
in  Massowa,  they  took  the  advice  of  a  Swiss  named  Munzinger, 
who  knew  the  country,  well  and  went  to  the  Kunaona,  an 
almost  entirely  heathen  tribe  in  Northwestern  Abyssinia. 
Here,  in  the  next  few  years,  they  established  four  stations, 
suffering  much  in  the  meantime  from  sickness  and  want,  but 
receiving  strong  reinforcements  from  Sweden.  Tendur  was 
their  chief  station.  But  their  position  was  rendered  so  unsafe 
by  the  boundary  disputes  between  Egypt  and  Abyssinia,  that 
they  could  not  settle  here  permanently.  Consequently,  being 
also  faithlessly  forsaken  by  the  Kunama  themselves,  they  re- 
tired in  1870  to  the  Eed  Sea  port  Massowa.  There,  in  the 
tropical  and  unhealthful  plain  along  the  coast,  they  began, 
with  indescribable  patience,  and  constantly  contending  with 
disease  and  death,  a  work  which  proved  to  be  both  difficult 
and  unremunerative.  In  Massowa  an  unpretending  school 
was  opened,  which  was  attended  exclusively  by  the  children 
of  the  poor  and  of  slaves.     A  hospital  was  built  near  the 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  387 

thermal  springs  of  Ailet,  a  health  resort  of  the  country.  In 
Monkullo,  some  six  miles  from  Massowa,  a  boys'  school  was 
begun,  in  which  it  was  hoped  that  evangelists  might  be  edu- 
cated for  inaccessible  Abyssinia.  A  printing-press  was  also 
set  up  for  the  production  of  portions  of  the  Bible  and  of  Prot- 
estant literature.  In  spite  of  most  heroic  endeavours,  they 
were  not  able  to  penetrate  far  into  the  interior  of  the  country. 
A  station  which  had  been  begun  among  the  nominally  Chris- 
tian Mensa,  up  in  the  mountains  to  the  northwest  of  Massowa, 
had  to  be  abandoned.  A  deputation  which  was  sent  to  the 
Negus  John,  to  ask  his  permission  to  settle  in  Abyssinia,  was 
detained  by  him  for  two  years,  only  in  the  end  to  get  the  curt 
reply  that  he  did  not  want  two  kinds  of  Gospel  in  his  country. 
Three  of  the  natives  who  had  been  trained  by  the  missionaries 
pushed  straight  across  the  country  to  the  Galla  in  the  province 
of  Jimma,  and  commenced  a  work  of  evangelization,  which 
has  ever  since  been  like  "  a  light  that  shineth  in  a  dark  place." 
In  the  face  of  many  disappointments,  the  brave  Swedes  con- 
tinued to  send  the  message  home,  "  Do  not  abandon  Africa." 
With  the  year  1882  a  new  day  dawned  for  this  part  of 
Africa.  The  Italians  founded  the  colony  of  Eritrea  on  the 
shore  of  the  Eed  Sea,  and,  though  their  intention  to  subdue 
the  whole  of  Abyssinia  was  frustrated  by  the  bravery  of  the 
native  army,  and  Eritrea  was  for  ten  years  in  a  disturbed 
state  while  the  war  surged  to  and  fro,  yet  finally  order  was 
restored  under  the  Italian  flag,  and  the  Swedes  were  thus  en- 
abled to  push  forward.  By  degrees  they  occupied  four  moun- 
tain districts,  first  of  all  the  province  of  Hamasen  to  the  west 
of  Massowa,  where,  in  1891,  1892  and  1908,  they  established 
four  stations,  in  Asmara,  the  capital  of  Italian  Eritrea,  and 
in  the  neighbouring  towns,  Bellesa,  Zazega,  and  Adi-Ugri. 
In  this  neighbourhood  the  main  part  of  the  Swedish  work  is 
done.  The  inhabitants  have  for  ages  been  members  of  the 
Monophysite  Abyssinian  Church.  They  have,  perhaps,  been 
even  more  neglected  by  the  Church,  and  are  consequently 
more  ignorant  than  those  living  to  the  south,  where  the  ancient 
monasteries,  the  seats  of  scholastic  learning,  are  situated. 


388     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Originally  it  was  as  little  the  intention,  of  the  Swedes  to 
proselytize,  and  to  form  congregations,  as  it  was  that  of  most 
of  the  other  Protestant  missions  among  the  ancient  Churches. 
Nevertheless,  this  has  been  rendered  necessary  by  the  opposi- 
tion and  the  persecuting  spirit  of  the  native  ecclesiastical  au- 
thorities. In  1907"  the  congregations  contained  1,061  members, 
of  whom  452  were  communicants.  In  some  villages,  especially 
in  Shuma  Negus,  the  Gospel  has  become  a  power  among  the 
people. 

In  connection  with  the  Swedes  there  is  a  man,  highly 
respected  for  his  learning,  at  work  further  south  in  Amhara 
and  Shoa,  the  central  provinces  of  Abyssinia.  This  is  Debra 
Mariam  Tayeleny,  a  man  of  extraordinary  parts,  who  has  been 
successful  in  representing  the  claims  of  Protestantism  before 
the  Negus  Menelik  and  the  highest  government  and  church 
authorities. 

In  comparison  with  this  "  Abyssinian  "  mission,  the  so-called 
"  Tigre  "  branch  of  the  Swedish  mission  work  is  less  prominent, 
embracing  now,  as  it  does,  only  outposts  in  the  low-lying  torrid 
plain  of  Massowa  (especially  at  Monkullo)  and  at  Geleb  in  the 
district  of  Mensa,  where  the  inhabitants,  a  savage,  stolid  tribe 
of  hardly  8,000  souls,  are  nominally  Christian,  but  have  been 
slowly  yet  surely  falling  away  to  Islam.  The  Swedes  have 
also  renewed  their  work  in  their  first  field  among  the  Kunama 
tribe ;  there  they  have  established  a  station  in  KuUuko,  and 
are  engaged  in  building  a  second,  in  Auso  Konoma.  They 
have  also  translated  the  Gospels  into  the  language  of  the 
country.     But  thus  far  no  success  can  be  reported. 

We  have  already  mentioned  that,  through  the  recommenda- 
tion of  Dr.  Krapf,  the  Swedes  originally  intended  their  mission 
to  be  for  the  benefit  of  the  Galla.  The  people  of  this  Hamitic 
race,  scattered  over  a  large  portion  of  Africa,  are  well  grown 
men  of  a  warlike  disposition,  apparently  also  of  mental  talent, 
and  are  not  without  political  unity,  though  split  up  into 
numerous  nomadic  hordes.  Some  of  them  in  the  north  have, 
under  Abyssinian  influence,  embraced  Christianity,  though  a 
far  larger  number  have  been  converted  to  Islam.     The  tribes 


Egypt  and  Abyssinia  389 

in  tlie  south  and  southwest  have  so  strong  a  strain  of  negro 
blood,  through  intermarriage,  that  they  are  gradually  taking 
on  negro  characteristics.  There  are,  perhaps,  three  and  a  half 
million  of  them  altogether.  With  their  northern  tenacity  the 
Swedes  kept  their  eyes  upon  this  people.  The  first  despatch 
of  three  native  evangelists  and  their  operations  in  Jimma,  a 
southern  province  of  Abyssinia,  have  been  already  mentioned. 
The  first  advance,  the  journey  of  the  missionary  Arrhenius 
and  his  caravan,  by  way  of  Khartum,  up  the  Blue  Nile  to 
Famaka,  on  the  border  of  Egypt,  in  1882,  was  a  failure,  owing 
to  the  treachery  of  Marno,  the  Austrian  consul  in  Famaka, 
who  led^the  missionaries  and  the  natives  astray  by  giving  them 
wrong  information,  so  that  nearly  half  of  a  caravan  company 
died  in  the  fatal  climate.  In  1885  the  Kev.  IST.  Hylander 
made  another  attempt,  taking  the  new  road  that  runs  along 
the  coast  from  Zeile  (Sela)  to  Harar.  But  he,  too,  had  to 
leave  the  country  after  a  stay  of  twenty  months,  presumably 
owing  to  Komish  intrigues.  It  is  only  since  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century  that  two  really  passable  roads  appear 
to  have  been  opened.  The  Kev.  K.  Cederquist  has,  with  the 
help  of  the  intelligent  Ras  Makonnen,  settled  down  in  Adia 
Abeba,  whence  he  makes  evangelistic  tours  among  Abyssinians 
and  Galla.  He  has  as  assistant  a  converted  Galla,  named  Ones- 
imus,  whose  sphere  of  work  is  inland  at  Nakamte.  He  is  one 
of  the  mostlremarkable  men  in  the  history  of  the  Swedish  Mis- 
sion. A  Galla  boy  of  good  family,  he  was  kidnapped,  passed 
from  hand  to  hand  as  a  slave,  and  came  at  last  to  Massowa, 
where  he  became  acquainted  with  the  Swedish  missionaries. 
From  them  he  received  instruction,  and  was  their  first  convert, 
being  baptized  in  1872.  As  the  youth  showed  talent,  the  mis- 
sionaries paid  great  attention  to  his  education,  finally  sending 
him  to  Sweden.  He  became,  along  with  Tayeleny,  the  most 
valuable  assistant  the  missionaries  had,  either  as  a  teacher  in 
their  schools  or  as  a  language  expert  in  the  work  of  transla- 
ting into  the  Galla  tongue.  With  his  help  the  whole  of  the 
New  Testament  was  thus  translated.  Latterly  he  has  been 
doing  pioneer  work  among  his  own  tribe,  in  which,  however, 


390     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

he  meets  with  much  opposition  and  animosity  on  the  part  of 
the  Abyssinian  priesthood. 

After  the  English  had  occupied  the  Somali  Coast,  the 
Swedes  approached  the  Galla  up  the  Juba.  Their  main  station 
is  at  Kismayu  on  the  coast,  while  out-stations  have  been 
established  in  Yonti  and  Mofi  further  up  the  stream.  But  the 
work  has  been  much  hindered  by  the  disturbed  state  of  the 
country,  caused  by  the  predatory  attacks  of  hordes  of  Somali 
and  Galla,  among  whom  Islam  has  been  making  great  prog- 
ress. Latterly,  also,  there  has  arisen  a  Mahdi,  the  "Mad 
Mollah."  Some  of  the  English  officials,  too,  have  opposed  the 
work  of  the  missionaries.  Still,  there  have  been  a  few  bap- 
tisms. The  Swedes  have  not  been  so  fortunate  as  their  pred- 
ecessors in  getting  into  the  country  and  gaining  the  hearts  of 
the  inhabitants.  They  have  only  touched  the  fringe  of  both 
the  Abyssinian  and  the  Galla  population.  In  Abyssinia  the 
door  was  shut  by  the  influence  of  the  ambitious  Eoman 
Catholic  missionaries,  and  by  the  determination  of  the  kings 
to  maintain  Abyssinian  independence  at  all  costs.  And  Dr. 
Krapf's  expectation  that  the  Galla  would  offer  a  promising 
field  for  mission  work  was  not  fulfilled,  in  spite  of  all  the 
labour  bestowed  upon  them  by  the  Swedes.  The  work  was 
thus  a  hard  training  in  patience,  a  long  sowing  in  hope  of  a 
harvest.  Yet  the  Swedes  remained  at  their  post,  while  earlier 
missions  were  swept  out  of  the  country  by  political  unrest 
and  religious  intrigue. 


VII 

MISSIONS  AMONG  THE  JEWS.     THE  WORK  OF  THE 
BIBLE  SOCIETIES 

THUS  far  two  Protestant  undertakings  that  have 
covered  the  entire  field  in  the  Near  East  have  been 
left  almost  unnoticed,  missions  among  the  Jews  and 
the  work  of  the  Bible  societies.  It  seemed  best  to  present 
these  undertakings  in  a  general  review,  rather  than  in  connec- 
tion with  the  individual  countries. 

(A)  Missions  Among  the  Jews 
As  a  rule  missions  among  Jews  and  missions  among  Gentiles 
pursue  diverse  paths.  They  differ  so  widely  in  their  methods 
of  work,  in  the  training  which  members  of  the  mission  must 
receive,  and  in  the  immediate  ends  at  which  they  aim,  that  it  is 
impossible  to  unite  the  two  kinds  of  mission  work  in  one  place 
and  in  the  hands  of  the  same  people.  The  Near  East  seemed 
to  be  an  exception  to  this  rule.  Here,  where  the  chosen  peo- 
ple were  so  thoroughly  scattered  among  the  native  popula- 
tion, with  which  the  missions  were  primarily  concerned,  it 
seemed  possible  to  bring  them  the  message  of  the  Gospel 
through  the  same  agencies  through  which  it  was  brought  to 
the  Gentiles.  Several  of  the  great  societies,  accordingl}'-,  in 
addition  to  their  main  undertaking,  carried  on  work  among 
the  Jews,  especially  the  American  Board,  the  United  Presby- 
terians in  Egypt,  and  the  Irish  Presbyterians  in  Damascus. 
Remarkable  to  say,  the  combination  has  proved  to  be  quite 
impracticable.  Apart  from  the  limited  operations  of  the  Irish 
in  Damascus,  mission  work  among  the  Jews  has  been  handed 
over  to  special  Jewish  missionary  societies.  Thus  there  is  the 
strange  spectacle  of  different  missionary  organizations  work- 
ing side  by  side  in  the  Near  East,  some  for  Jews,  some  for 
Gentiles. " 

391 


392     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

It  is  hard  to  say  how  many  Jews  there  are  in  the  Near 
East.  It  is  computed  that  there  are  110,000  of  them  in  Euro- 
pean Turkey,  the  majority  of  whom  live  in  Constantinople 
and  Salonica.  For,  when  Ferdinand  of  Castile  drove  the 
Jews  from  Spain  in  1492,  and  when  the  Jews  were  exiled 
from  Portugal  in  1497,  the  greater  part  of  them  fled  to  Con- 
stantinople, and  settled  there  or  in  the  neighbourhood.  They 
still  retain,  in  common  use,  the  Spanish  language  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  strongly  intermixed  with  Hebrew  idioms. 
They  go  by  the  name  of  Sephardim.  In  Asia  Minor  and  Ar- 
menia there  are  probably  not  more  than  100,000  Jews,  the 
largest  colony  of  them  being  in  Smyrna.  In  Syria  there  are 
said  to  be  from  fifty  to  seventy  thousand  Jews,  mostly  in 
Beirut  and  Damascus.  In  Palestine  they  themselves  compute 
their  number  as  87,000.  The  official  census  of  Egypt  in  1897 
gave  25,200  Jews  in  that  country.  The  estimated  number  of 
Falasha  in  Abyssinia  is  200,000 ;  this  figure  is  too  high.  Bag- 
dad contains  a  Jewish  colony  numbering  from  eight  to  ten 
thousand.  In  Persia  there  are  Jewish  colonies,  especially  in 
Haraadan  and  its  neighbourhood,  and  also  in  Teheran  and 
Tabriz,  numbering  altogether  80,000,^  Here  they  have  been 
cruelly  persecuted  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  present  day. 
According  to  the  Annuaire  des  archii)es  Israelites  (1892),  not 
more  than  310,000  Jews  live  in  Asia. 

Only  in  Palestine  are  the  Jews  to-day  occupied  in  farming 
and  fruit-raising,  whether  in  ancient  Jewish  centres  like  Safed, 
or  in  the  modern  Jewish  colonies.  Elsewhere  they  mostly 
live  huddled  together  in  narrow  filthy  Ghettos,  and,  although 
the  majority  of  them  are  in  an  ignorant,  superstitious  and 
poverty-stricken  condition,  certain  of  their  number  have  ever 
by  their  commercial  cleverness  and  by  usury  amassed  princely 
fortunes.  The  Sephardim  from  Spain  and  Portugal  form  the 
main  stock  of  Jews  in  the  Near  East,  their  language  being  a 
corruption  of  Hebrew-Spanish.  Yet,  particularly  since  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  an  ever-increasing  number 

^Formerly  only  20,000.  Cf.  De  le  Eoi,  "  Geschichte  der  Judenmission, "  "Vol. 
Ill,  p.  208.     On  the  other  hand,  cf.  "  The  Bible  in  the  World,"  1905,  p.  299. 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  30)3 

of  the  Ashkenazim  from  Poland  and  Southern  Kussia  have 
been  immigrating,  so  that  they  now  number  more  than  the 
Spanish  Jews.  Their  language  is  mostly  Yiddish.  On  ac- 
count of  their  poverty  and  their  filthy  habits  they  are  looked 
down  upon  as  plebeian  by  the  Sephardim,  who  regard  them- 
selves as  patricians.  Within  the  last  twenty  years  there  has 
also  been  a  considerable  immigration  of  Jews  from  other 
European  countries,  particularly  from  Germany,  thus  adding 
to  the  patchwork  character  of  Jewish  language  and  habits  in 
the  Near  East.  According  to  the  general  practice  of  the 
Turkish  Empire,  the  Jews,  as  a  distinct  religious  body,  are  al- 
lowed to  manage  their  own  concerns.  They  elect  from 
amongst  their  number  two  superiors,  the  IchakhamSy  one  of 
whom  is  chosen  from  the  foremost  rabbis  in  Constantinople, 
the  other  from  the  chief  rabbis  in  Jerusalem. 

This  patriarchal  organization,  mostly  under  orthodox  Tal- 
mudic  rule,  has  been  a  great  obstacle  to  the  work  of  the  mis- 
sions. It  placed  in  the  hands  of  these  authorities,  sanctioned 
by  the  state,  far-reaching  powers,  which  were  inconsiderately 
employed'to  suppress  Christianity  and  all  inclination  to  listen 
to  the  missionaries.  As  such  persecution  was  made  the  easier 
by  fanatical  public  opinion,  those  of  the  same  household  being 
often  the  foremost  in  casting  out  and  ill  using  converts,  and 
the  latter  being  deprived  of  the  means  of  existence  by  a  strict 
boycott,  missions  among  the  Jews  in  the  Near  East  have  gen- 
erally involved  suffering.  A  further  hindrance  was  the  fact 
that  by  far  the  greater  number  of  converts  had  to  leave  their 
homes,  and  thus  the  formation  of  congregations  was  almost 
impossible.  Then  again,  since,  in  many  cases,  the  Jewish 
missionary  societies  did  not  sufficiently  exert  themselves,  in 
the  face  of  undoubtedly  great  difficulties,  to  amalgamate  their 
little  bands  of  Jewish  converts  with  the  larger  Protestant 
congregations,  these  tiny  companies  took  no  root.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  was  danger  that  the  mission  should  become 
to  the  Jews,  who  were  for  the  most  part  poor,  a  mere  oppor- 
tunity for  gain,  since  joining  the  Christian  Church  was  likely 
to  secure  to  the  converts  an  easy  life,  and  to  their  children, 


394     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

who  were  eager  to  be  educated,  high  and  lucrative  positions ; 
for  the  missionaries,  with  their  societies  behind  them,  obviously 
had  it  in  their  power  to  be  exceedingly  rich  benefactors. 

Methods  of  conducting  missions  among  the  Jews  do  not 
vary  greatly  throughout  the  Near  East.  The  first  preparatory 
step  is  the  distribution  of  Christian  literature  in  the  dialects 
spoken  by  Jews  from  Spain,  Poland  and  Germany.  The  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  which  have  been  repeatedly  translated 
and  revised,  occupy  the  first  place.  Of  the  books  specially 
written  for  these  missions,  McCaul's  "  True  Israelite  "  deserves 
to  be  particularly  mentioned.  Then,  in  order  to  gain  the  con- 
fidence and  affection  of  the  suspicious  and  proud  Jews,  medi- 
cal mission  work  was  soon  commenced  among  them.  There 
are  now  hospitals  and  dispensaries,  chiefly  in  Palestine,  but 
also  in  the  large  towns  of  Asia  Minor  and  European  Turkey, 
which  are  meant  in  the  first  instance  for  Jews.  The  third 
preparatory  method,  that  of  establishing  schools,  was  every- 
where difficult,  and  demanded  much  patience  on  the  part  of 
the  missionaries.  If  the  Jews  were  otherwise  taught  at  all,  it 
was  only  the  Talmud  and  a  little  reading  and  writing.  They 
had  such  a  dislike  for  regular  schools  that,  as  late  as  1881,  an 
attempt  made  by  the  "  Israelite  Alliance "  to  establish  in 
Jerusalem  a  school  along  modern  lines  altogether  failed.  For 
this  reason  the  missionaries,  especially  those  from  Scotland, 
hit  [upon  the  plan  of  admitting  Christian  children  into  their 
schools,  in  order,  for  one  thing,  thus  to  insure  the  further  ex- 
istence of  the  schools,  and,  further,  to  arouse  a  spirit  of  emu- 
lation in  the  apathetic  Jewish  children.  The  missions  of  the 
Established  Church  of  Scotland  have  a  boys'  school  and  a 
girls'  school  in  Alexandria,  the  former  having  103  Jewish 
boys  in  a  total  attendance  of  260,  and  the  latter  167  Jewish 
girls  out  of  233.     These  mixed  schools  have  done  well. 

The  main  object  of  all  the  missions  is  to  win  individual  Jews, 
to  succeed  in  which  object  optimism  and  wise  reserve  are 
equally  necessary,  and  one  must  be  "  wise  as  serpents  and 
harmless  as  doves."  The  more  the  national  factor  can  be 
eliminated,  the  better.    Certainly  Jewish  missions  must  have 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  oo^ 

the  hope  set  before  them  of  a  Christian  Israel,  but  any  tribute 
paid  to  the  deep-rooted  Jewish  pride  of  race  and  religion  is 
attended  by  evil  results.  Whenever  there  has  been  any  co- 
quetting with  national  ideals,  mischief  has  come  of  it,  even 
when  it  was  done  by  so  ardent  a  progressive  as  the  convert 
Z.  'H.  Friedlaender,  in  the  Holy  Land  from  18Y3  to  1886. 
De  le  Koi  says,  in  his  "  Geschichte  der  evangelischen  Juden- 
mission,"  Yol.  Ill,  p.  193,  that  the  object  of  such  missions 
must  be,  and  remain,  the  leading  of  individuals  to  Jesus.  If 
more  is  attempted,  neither  the  one  thing  nor  the  other  is  at- 
tained. 

Subsidiary  to  the  main  undertaking  there  are  other  agencies 
at  work,  especially  of  an  industrial  nature,  partly  in  order  to 
enable  the  converts,  who  have  lost  all  by  their  change  of  re- 
ligion, to  earn  a  living  by  honest  labour,  and  partly  to  accus- 
tom those  who  had  up  to  that  time  lived  by  begging  to  earn 
their  own  bread  in  the  sweat  of  their  brow.  The  best  organ- 
ized and  most  successful  of  such  institutions  is  the  Industrial 
Home  in  Jerusalem,  upon  which  Miss  Jane  Cook  of  Chelten- 
ham bestowed  £700  for  the  purchase  of  a  site,  £10,000  for  the 
buildings  and  £2,000  for  the  maintenance  of  the  workers. 
This  is  presumably  the  largest  single  gift  Jewish  missions  in 
the  Near  East  have  received.  Unfortunately  there  has  been 
little  success  in  training  converts  to  be  catechists,  not  one  of 
the  societies  having  among  their  converts  students  enough  to 
maintain  a  training-school,  apart  from  the  difficulty  arising 
from  the  variety  of  dialects  spoken  by  the  people.  Nor  have 
the  missions  thus  far  combined  in  a  common  undertaking  of 
the  kind.  The  London  Jewish  Mission  opened  a  "  Mission 
College "  for  this  purpose  in  Jerusalem  about  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  but  was  not  able  to  maintain  it. 

The  main  stations  in  Turkey  in  Eurojpe^  are  Constantinople 
and  Salonica.  In  the  former  place  the  American  Board 
laboured  from  1831  to  1855,  in  addition  to  its  extensive  work 

'We  omit  all  mention  of  a  considerable  number  of  unsuccessful  attempts.  It 
is  well  known  that  failure  and  disappointment  have  been  but  too  common  in 
connection  with  work  among  Jews  in  the  Near  East. 


396     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

among  the  Armenians.  In  1842  the  energetic  mission  of  the 
Free  Church  in  Scotland  began  to  work  there,  conducting,  ia 
addition  to  its  two  schools,  attended  by  500  pupils,  two-thirds 
of  whom  are  girls,  a  mission  hospital  and  a  home  for  destitute 
girls.  Their  work  took  an  upward  bound  in  1873,  when,  un- 
der an  energetic  missionary,  the  Rev.  A.  Tomory,  large,  new 
premises  were  occupied.  Special  excitement  was  aroused  by 
the  conversion  of  Eliezer  Bassin,  one  of  the  most  striking 
conversions  of  the  present  day.  Burning  with  zeal  for  his 
Talmudic  theology,  he  had  set  out  from  his  home  in  Mohilev 
in  Russia,  in  order  to  argue  with  the  Christian  converts  in  Con- 
stantinople, and  to  lead  them  back  to  the  faith  of  their  fathers. 
But  D.  Landsmann,  one  of  the  converts,  had  the  better  of 
the  encounter,  and,  after  long  and  vigorous  disputations,  con- 
vinced him  of  the  truth  of  Christianity.  Since  1859  the 
Established  Church  of  Scotland,  like  the  Free  Church,  has  had 
a  flourishing  girls'  school  and  a  medical  mission  among  the 
Jews  of  Constantinople.  The  work  of  the  Established  Church 
there  began  when  the  American  Board,  upon  abandoning  its 
work  among  the  Jews,  requested  this  Church  to  take  it  up. 
The  great  London  Jewish  Society  also  had  work  in  Constanti- 
nople intermittently,  beginning  in  1826,  and  has  maintained 
its  work  there  permanently  since  1851.  It  has  had  effective 
agents,  especially  in  the  converts,  C.  S.  Newman  (1856-1881) 
and  J.  B.  Creighton-Ginsberg  (since  1885).  The  former  dis- 
tinguished himself  by  his  careful  attention  to  the  Jewish 
schools,  and  perhaps  still  more  by  his  conduct  of  some  difficult 
legal  matters,  thus  securing  the  legal  status  of  the  converts 
and  checking  the  arbitrary  actions  of  the  rabbis.  Whether  it 
is  wise  for  three  societies  to  work  in  so  limited  a  field  is 
doubtful.  It  may  be  added  that  Ginsberg,  in  1899,  knew  of 
only  forty-five  converts  in  the  three  societies  together. 

Wilhelm  Gottlieb  Schauffler  was  by  far  the  most  important 
missionary  among  the  Jews  in  Constantinople,  in  fact  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  missionaries  in  the  Near  East  generally. 
Born  on  the  28th  of  August,  1798,  in  Stuttgart,  he  emigrated 
as  a  child  with  his  father  to  Odessa.    After  a  defective  edu- 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  397 

cation,  but  with  an  extraordinary  gift  for  acquiring  languages, 
he  became  acquainted  in  Smyrna  with  the  American  Board 
missionary,  Jonas  King,  who  induced  him  to  enter  the  re- 
nowned Andover  Theological  Seminary  in  the  United  States, 
where,  in  a  five  years'  stay,  characterized  by  indefatigable  in- 
dustry, he  acquired  a  thorough  theological  and  linguistic 
training.  In  1831  the  American  Board  sent  him  to  Constanti- 
nople as  a  missionary  to  the  Jews  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula, 
and  there,  amid  many  privations,  he  did  a  great  work  among 
the  Sephardira,  his  activity  extending  to  Vienna,  Buda-Pest, 
and  Odessa.  He  so  thoroughly  mastered  Spanish  and  Spanish- 
Hebrew  that,  up  to  the  time  of  his  death,  he  wrote  indefati- 
gably  in  both  of  those  languages.  At  the  time  when  the 
Board  abandoned  its  Jewish  mission  in  1885,  it  seemed  as  if 
"a  great  door  and  effectual"  was  being  opened  for  work 
among  the  Turks  in  connection  with  the  Crimean  War,  which 
was  then  raging,  and  Schauffler,  at  his  own  request,  was  ap- 
pointed leader  of  a  Turkish  mission  in  Constantinople,  which 
was  carried  on  independently  of  the  Armenian  Mission.  But 
when,  to  Schauffler's  great  sorrow,  the  Turkish  Mission  was 
also  given  up  a  few  years  later,  he  left  the  service  of  the 
American  Board  and  devoted  himself,  in  connection  with  the 
British  and  American  Bible  Societies,  to  linguistic  labours,  one 
of  the  chief  of  which  was  an  important  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  classical  (Osmanli)  Turkish  which,  however,  on  ac- 
count of  its  elevated  literary  style,  was  only  partially  pub- 
lished. The  results  of  his  studies  were  so  highly  appreciated 
that  the  University  of  Halle  conferred  the  title  of  D.  D.  upon 
him.  After  a  service  of  fifty  years  in  Constantinople,  he  re- 
tired from  the  work  and  made  New  York  his  home,  dying 
there  on  the  26th  of  January,  1883,  at  the  age  of  eighty-four. 
In  Salonica,  Avhere,  according  to  the  report  of  the  National 
Bible  Society  of  Scotland  for  1907,  there  is  a  colony  of  80,000 
Jews,  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland  has  the  chief  work, 
having  entered  upon  this  diflficult  field  in  1866.  Its  activity 
extends  as  far  as  Monastir  and  Cassandra,  which  are  sub- 
stations of  the  mission.    There  is  a  small  Protestant  congre- 


398     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

gation  in  Salonica,  and  a  flourishing  girls'  school.  Adrianople 
is  a  station  of  the  London  Jewish  Society. 

There  is  only  one  fully  manned  station  for  work  among  the 
Jews  in  Asia  Minor,  namely,  Smyrna ;  and  here  the  Estab- 
lished Church  of  Scotland  and  the  London  Jewish  Mission 
work  side  by  side.  The  former  began  work  in  1856  ;  the  lat- 
ter came  in  1829,  and,  after  some  interruptions,  has  been 
steadily  and  permanently  at  work  since  1860.  At  the  head  of 
the  Scottish  Mission  was  Abraham  Ben  Oliel,  a  talented  but 
unstable  man,  who  has  been  in  the  service  of  the  most  diverse 
societies.  Flourishing  schools  and  a  hospital  are  the  backbone 
of  the  Scottish  work.  The  chief  missionary  of  the  London 
Jewish  Mission  in  Smyrna  was  J.  M.  Eppstein  (1866-1885),  a 
faithful  man,  who  by  his  medical  skill  found  entrance  among 
the  people. 

In  Syria,  exclusive  of  Palestine,^  there  are  only  two  centres 
of  work  among  the  Jews  which  deserve  special  mention. 
The  Jewish  Mission  of  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland 
occupied  Beirut  conjointly  with  the  Presbyterian  Church  of 
Canada,  in  1862,  and  there  flourishing  schools  have  been  es- 
tablished. In  Damascus  the  Irish  Presbyterians  devote  them- 
selves to  the  Jews,  in  addition  to  their  work  among  Oriental 
Christians,  but  do  not  seem  to  have  met  with  much  success. 
Here,  too,  the  London  Jewish  Mission  has  been  working  since 
1869,  with  great  persistency,  yet  with  little  success,  since  the 
few  converts  cannot  remain  in  Damascus. 

The  only  place  in  Egypt  that  has  any  importance  for  an  ac- 
count of  Jewish  missions  is  Alexandria,  with  its  more  than 
10,000  Jews.  The  first  society  in  this  field  was  the  Glasgow 
Scottish  Mission  to  the  Jews.  They  recalled  their  medical 
missionary,  Dr.  Philip,  in  1857,  and  the  Established  Church  of 
Scotland  took  over  the  work  in  1858.  It  was  fortunate  for 
them  that  the  Viceroy  Said,  who  was  a  generous  friend  of 
mission  work,  presented  them  in  1861  with  a  large  site,  on 
which  they  were  able  to  erect  mission  buildings.     There,  as 

*  For  an  account  of  missionary  work  among  the  Jews  of  Palestine,  see  Chap. 
IV,  B. 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  399 

in  other  stations  of  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland,  the 
main  part  of  the  work  lies  in  the  schools,  in  which  as  many 
Christian  children  as  possible  are  gathered  in  addition  to 
Jewish  children.  Cairo  was  a  station  of  the  London  Jewish 
Society  from  184T  to  1867,  and  Alexandria  from  1871  to  1874. 
But  both  these  stations  have  been  since  then  abandoned. 

Among  the  eight  or  ten  thousand  Jews  in  Bagdad^  some  of 
whom  are  the  richest  merchants  of  this  ancient  city  of  the 
khalifs,  the  London  Jewish  Society  laboured  from  1844  to  1866. 
But  it  neither  succeeded  in  finding  maintenance  for  its  few 
converts,  nor  in  laying  the  foundation  of  a  strong  Protestant 
congregation.  And  as  cooperation  with  other  existing 
churches  was  found  to  be  impossible,  the  thankless  task  was 
abandoned. 

In  Persia  the  missionaries  of  the  London  Jewish  Society, 
starting  from  Bagdad,  made  missionary  tours,  especially  to 
Hamadan,  distributing  Bibles  and  Protestant  literature.  Sur- 
prising success  attended  this  work.  In  1875  Ezekiel  Khayim, 
the  son  of  one  of  the  richest  and  most  respected  Jews,  and  the 
physician  Dr.  Aghajan  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Jesus  as  the 
promised  Messiah  by  reading  the  Bible.  A  small  but  select 
company  of  like-minded  men  joined  them.  The  cruel  perse- 
cutions which  they  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  Jews  only 
made  them  cleave  the  faster  to  their  faith.  After  some  of 
them  had  been  baptized  in  1878  by  American  missionaries, 
who  itinerated  in  that  region,  the  London  Jewish  Society  sent 
them  a  missionary,  J.  Lotka,  in  1881.  But  the  persecutions 
were  so  violent  that  Lotka  thought  it  prudent  to  leave  the 
country  in  1884.  At  this  juncture  the  Persian  Jew  Nurallah, 
who  had  taken  a  theological  education  in  London,  with  a  view 
to  becoming  a  preacher  among  his  own  people,  was  commis- 
sioned to  care  for  the  small  but  faithful  company  of  converts. 
The  American  missionaries  who  had  maintained  a  station  in 
Hamadan  since  1881,  also  faithfully  looked  after  the  converts 
who  were  hungering  for  the  truth,  building  them  a  Christian 
synagogue,  opening  a  school  for  Jewish  girls,  and  receiving 
the    converts    into    their  community.      With  the  tenacity 


400     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

peculiar  to  orientals,  who  hold  fast  to  the  traditional  script, 
though  they  have  forgotten  the  ancient  language  itself,  the 
Persian  Jews  read  the  Persian  language  written  in  Hebrew 
characters.  The  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  has  there- 
fore specially  prepared  for  them  an  edition  of  the  Bible  in 
Persian,  but  in  Hebrew  type.  The  Jewish  colonies  in  other 
Persian  towns,  such  as  Teheran,  Urumiah  and  Souchbulak, 
have  also  been  cared  for,  chiefly  by  the  American  Presbyterian 
Mission  and  the  London  Jewish  Society.  The  favourite  plan 
has  been  to  establish  schools  for  Jewish  children,  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  offered  by  the  Persian  authorities.  Conver- 
sions have  been  few,  and  are  always  accompanied  by  much 
persecution  {Missionary  JReview,  1895,  pp.  837  ff.). 

(B)  The  Work  of  the  JBihle  Societies 
(1)  Translations  of  the  Bible.  We  have  already  several 
times  referred  to  translations  of  the  Bible  into  the  native 
languages  of  the  Kear  East,  undertaken  by  the  various  mis- 
sionary societies.  But  this  work  is  of  such  importance  that  it 
deserves  to  be  considered  in  detail.  It  forms  a  bright  chapter 
in  the  history  of  Protestant  missions.  Not  one  of  these 
Oriental  Churches  possessed  a  Bible  in  the  generally  under- 
stood language  of  the  country,  and  yet  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  that  such  Bibles  should  be  provided,  if  the  people 
were  to  be  religiously  enlightened.  Protestant  missions  have 
made  the  Word  of  God  accessible  to  the  common  people.  An 
impartial  criticism  of  Christianity  was  rendered  very  difficult 
to  a  Muhammadan  on  account  of  the  century-long  contempt 
with  which  he  had  proudly  looked  down  upon  Christians. 
The  first  step  in  mission  work  among  Muhammadans  was, 
therefore,  to  find  a  common  meeting-ground  for  both  religions. 
On  the  authority  of  the  Koran,  Moslems  are  compelled  to 
recognize  the  Bible  as  the  "Word  of  God.  For  this  reason  the 
pioneer  missionary  work  among  Muhammadans  consists  in  the 
distribution  of  the  Bible  and  in  an  introduction  to  its  study. 
Jews,  it  has  been  found,  can  be  convinced  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah  only  by  proving  from  the  Old  Testament  that  this  is 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  401 

true.  And  only  by  diligent  searching  of  the  Scriptures  can 
this  conviction  be  gained.  Thus  the  translation  of  the  Bible 
is  in  a  special  way  throughout  the  Near  East  the  foundation 
of  missionary  work  among  Oriental  Christians,  Muhammadans 
and  Jews  alike.  We  will  review  {a)  translations  of  the  Bible 
into  Muhammadan  languages,  and  {b)  translations  into  the 
languages  of  the  Oriental  Churches. 

{a)  Translations  into  Muhammadan  languages.  Three 
languages  are  here  involved,  Turkish,  Arabic  and  Persian.  In 
Turkish  the  predominant  dialect  is  Osmanli  Turkish.  Into 
this  dialect  a  great  part  of  the  Bible  was  translated  by  a  court 
official,  Ali  Bey,  a  Polish  renegade,  during  the  reign  of  Sultan 
Muhammad  lY,  1648-1687.  The  manuscript  lay,  however,  in 
the  Leyden  library  until  it  was  at  length  printed  in  1819  in  a 
completed,  revised  and  considerably  improved  form.  Yet  it 
was  still  of  too  elementary  and  faulty  a  character  to  be  even 
moderately  useful.  The  talented  linguist.  Dr.  W.  G.  Schauf- 
fler,  accordingly  undertook  the  difficult  task  of  producing  an 
entirely  new  translation,  which  was  printed  in  parts  in  New 
York  between  the  years  1867  and  1873.  But  even  this  trans- 
lation did  not  fully  come  up  to  expectation,  because  it  was 
written  in  classical  Turkish  and  was  therefore  unintelligible 
to  the  common  people.  Consequently  there  have  since  been 
two  revision  committees,  which  met  in  1878  and  1887,  consist- 
ing chiefly  of  Dr.  Kiggs,  Herrick,  Weakley  and  H.  O.  D wight, 
with  a  native  linguist,  for  the  purpose  of  perfecting  and  even, 
in  some  parts,  rewriting  Schauffler's  translation.  These  re- 
vised editions  are  excellent.  Osmanli  Turkish  has  spread  so 
far  that  in  Asia  Minor  it  has  to  some  extent  taken  the  place 
of  Greek  in  the  Orthodox  Church,  and  of  Armenian  in  the 
Gregorian  Church ;  and  mixed  dialects,  Graeco-Turkish  and 
Armeno-Turkish  have  been  formed,  which  are,  however,  writ- 
ten respectively  in  Greek  and  Armenian  characters,  and  not 
in  the  Arabic  characters  of  Osmanli  Turkish.  The  missions 
have  adopted  both  these  dialects.  The  ITew  Testament  was 
translated  into  Armeno-TurTcish  in  1815  by  two  learned  Ar- 
menians, and  the  translation  was  printed  in  1819  in  St.  Peters- 


402     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

burg.  It  was  subjected  to  a  revision  by  the  Kev.  H.  D.  Leaves 
of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society.  But  as  it  was  not 
yet  adequate,  Dr.  Goodell  made  a  completely  new  translation 
of  the  whole  Bible,  the  New  Testament  being  published  in 
1831  and  the  Old  Testament  in  1841.  Thoroughly  revised 
versions  of  this  translation  appeared  in  1858  and  1863. 

"William  Goodell  (1Y92-1867)  was  one  of  the  industrious 
missionaries  of  the  American  Board,  whose  translations  of  the 
Bible  deserve  great  praise.  In  1823,  during  the  turmoil  of 
the  Greek  "War  of  Liberation,  he  was  sent  to  Beirut,  where  he 
at  once  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  the  Armeno-Turkish 
dialect.  He  was  removed  to  Constantinople  in  1831  to  enter 
the  Armenian  Mission,  which  had  just  been  begun,  and  in  this 
mission  he  remained  thirty-four  years  until  1865,  that  critical 
period  in  the  history  of  the  mission.^ 

The  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  published  the  New 
Testament  in  Grceco-Turhish  in  1865,  the  translation  being 
subsequently  revised  by  one  of  the  society's  missionaries,  the 
Kev.  H.  D.  Leeves.  The  next  step  was  to  rewrite  and  re- 
print Goodell's  Armeno-Turkish  translation  in  Greek  letters. 
But  as  even  this  did  not  prove  satisfactory,  the  society  com- 
missioned the  two  natives.  Rev.  G.  Casakos  and  Rev.  A. 
Asadurian,  to  prepare  what  was  to  be  practically  a  totally 
new  translation  (1884).  But  during  all  this  work  of  revision, 
the  conviction  dawned  upon  the  missionaries  that,  since  all 
the  three  dialects  are  fundamentall}''  very  closely  related  to 
one  another,  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  produce  one  common 
translation,  though  printed  in  the  three  different  types, 
Arabic,  Greek  and  Armenian.  "With  this  in  view  a  new  re- 
vision committee  sat  from  1883  to  1887,  and  its  labours  seem 
to  have  been  successful.  This  example,  however,  shows  to 
what  expenditure  of  labour  and  money  the  British  and  Ameri- 
can Bible  Societies,  in  combination  with  the  various  mission- 
ary societies,  went,  in  order  to  produce  as  perfect  as  possible 
a  translation  into  an  important  language. 

1 "  Memoirs  of  Rev.  Wm.  Goodell,  D.  D.,"  by  Ed.  G.  Prime,  D.  D.,  8th  ed., 
Boston,  1891. 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  403 

Another  dialect  of  the  Turkish  language  is  spoken  in  Trans- 
caucasia, which,  as  it  is  mostly  used  in  Azerbaijan  in  North- 
western Persia,  is  called  Azerbaijani.  A  translation  of  the 
New  Testament  into  this  language,  made  by  the  Basle  mis- 
sionaries, Zaremba  and  Pfander,  with  the  help  of  their  faith- 
ful assistant,  Mirza  Farukh,  continued  to  be  printed  either  in 
part  or  entire  until  1875.  Mirza  Farukh  himself  later  made 
another  translation  of  almost  the  entire  Bible,  but  the  manu- 
script lay  neglected  till  his  son,  Abraham  Amirkhanyanz, 
found  it  forty  years  later,  completed  it,  and,  with  the  help  of 
the  British  Bible  Society,  published  it  in  1878.  Meanwhile 
Dr.  Benjamin  Labaree  had  begun  an  independent  translation. 
After  Dr.  Labaree  had  published  several  books  of  the  Bible  in 
his  translation,  they  wisely  agreed  to  unite  forces.  Their 
translation  was  completed  and  printed  in  1893.  One  of  the 
Gospels  of  this  translation  is  even  printed  in  Hebrew  type  for 
the  Jews  living  in  the  province.  It  does  not  lie  within  the 
scope  of  this  book  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  translations 
into  the  Turkish  dialects  of  Kashgar,  Dsagatai,  Kirghiz, 
Kumuk,  Usbeg  and  Yakut. 

Translations  of  the  Gospels  and  of  the  Pentateuch  into 
Persian  had  come  down  from  the  Middle  Ages,  but  they  were 
very  defective.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  various 
Anglo-Indians  made  attempts  at  the  translation  of  the  Bible 
into  that  language,  because  of  its  importance  for  Northern 
India ;  among  these  attempts  may  be  mentioned  those  of 
Colonel  Colebrooke  in  1804,  and  of  Kev.  L.  Sebastian!  in  1812. 
Then  Henry  Martyn  set  himself  to  the  important  task.  His 
first  hasty  translation  of  the  New  Testament  satisfied  him  so 
ill  that  he  went  to  Shiraz  in  1811,  and  there,  with  the  help  of 
Persian  scholars,  produced  a  translation  which  was  repeatedly 
printed,  in  Calcutta  and  St.  Petersburg  (1816),  in  London 
(1837),  and  in  Edinburgh  (1847).  To  complete  this  work,  the 
Old  Testament  was  translated  by  the  Scottish  missionary, 
Dr.  William  Glen  in  Astrakhan  (1826),  and,  independently, 
by  Archdeacon  Kobinson,  in  Calcutta.  Both  these  transla- 
tions were  printed,  but  they  stood  in  sore  need  of  revision. 


404     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

So  Dr.  K.  Bruce,  a  missionary  of  the  Church  Missionary  So- 
ciety, and  a  man  of  great  linguistic  talent,  undertook  a  thor- 
ough revision  of  the  entire  Bible  in  Persian,  beginning  this 
work  in  1871.  The  new  edition  was  printed  under  his  direc- 
tion, in  Leipsic,  in  1895,  at  the  cost  of  the  British  Bible  Society. 

More  important  for  the  world  of  Islam  than  either  Turkish 
or  Persian  is  Arabic,  the  language  of  the  Koran,  and  of 
Moslem  culture  and  learning,  upon  which,  accordingly,  a  cor- 
responding measure  of  devoted  toil  has  been  expended.  The 
translation  made  by  John  of  Seville  (750),  and  the  translations 
printed  in  Rome  in  the  years  1591  and  1671,  were  imperfect, 
at  times  painfully  literal,  translations  from  the  Vulgate.  The 
earliest  Protestant  translations  were  the  translation  made  by 
Erpenius  in  Leyden  in  1616,  the  translation  which  appeared  in 
"Walton's  Polyglot  Bible  in  1657,  and  the  translation  of  Pro- 
fessor Lee,  the  linguist  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society. 
These  translations  were  still  faulty,  yet,  in  the  absence  of  a 
better,  they  were  repeatedly  published.  At  last,  however,  two 
highly  talented  American  missionaries  in  Beirut,  Dr.  Eli  Smith 
(died  11th  of  January,  1857),  and  Dr.  C.  Y.  A.  Van  Dyck, 
made  it  one  of  the  chief  undertakings  of  their  lives  to  produce  a 
standard  Arabic  translation  of  the  Bible.  The  New  Testa- 
ment appeared  in  1860,  the  Old  in  1864,  and  the  entire  Bible 
in  1865.  Even  after  this  Dr.  Yan  Dyck  never  grew  weary  of 
improving  and  polishing  the  translation.  It  is  regarded  as  a 
classical  work,  and  has  superseded  all  other  translations,  at 
least  in  the  Protestant  world.  It  is  issued  in  thirty-seven 
different  forms  by  the  American  and  the  British  Bible  Societies. 
Parts  of  it  are  printed  in  Syrian  letters  (Karshun),  and  in 
Hebrew  letters  for  the  Jews.  Even  an  edition  for  the  blind  is 
published,  the  Old  Testament  in  the  Moon  script,  the  New  in 
Braille. 

The  language  of  the  Kurds  is  of  less  importance  compared 
with  the  chief  Moslem  languages,  yet  a  translation  of  the 
Bible  is  more  difficult,  both  because  the  language  is  split  up 
into  many  dialects  and  because  the  Kurds,  for  want  of  a  script 
of  their  own,  use  Arabic  characters  in  some  districts  and 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  405 

Armenian  in  others.  In  1827  Siievris,  the  Armenian  bishop 
in  Tabriz,  translated  a  portion  of  the  Bible  into  Hakkiari,  a 
dialect  of  the  Kurdish,  and  the  Basle  missionaries  of  Shusha 
revised  the  translation.  Yet  it  was  not  widely  intelligible. 
Since  then  three  different  parties  have  undertaken  transla- 
tions, the  American  Board,  through  Dr.  Andrus  and  Dr. 
Barton  of  Mardin,  in  Armenian  characters,  while  the  Anglican 
missionary,  St.  Clair  Tisdall  of  Ispahan,  and  the  German 
missionary.  Pastor  Detlev  von  Oertzen  in  Souchbulak,  have 
made  independent  translations  in  Arabic  characters.  Some 
of  the  books  of  the  Bible  have  appeared  in  all  three  of  these 
translations.  It  is,  however,  desirable  that  these  three  parties 
should  combine  their  efforts. 

(5)  The  Oriental  Churches  were  first  provided  by  the  Prot- 
estant missions  with  Bibles  in  their  own  ancient  sacred  lan- 
guages. Even  in  the  Churches  Bibles  had  been  scarce,  since 
they  had  to  be  laboriously  copied  by  hand,  and  consequently 
private  persons  and  even  some  of  the  priests  could  hardly  afford 
to  acquire  copies.  Therefore  a  large  issue  in  print  was  required. 
Theologians  and  philologists  have  given  much  assistance  in  the 
work,  a  share  of  the  cost  being  borne  by  the  Bible  societies. 
Thus  editions  in  Ancient  Armenian  appeared  in  181 Y  in 
Calcutta  and  St.  Petersburg ;  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  published  a  large  edition  of  the  New  Testament  and 
Psalms ;  and  the  American  Bible  Society  printed  in  1838  the  en- 
tire Bible,  which  was  subsequently  thoroughly  revised  by  a  com- 
mittee of  experts  (1896).  A  Ko2)tic  edition  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment was  published  in  1847  by  the  Society  for  Promoting 
Christian  Knowledge,  after  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible 
Society  had  printed  the  Gospels  in  1829.  In  Ethiopian  (the 
ancient  Geez)  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  issued  the 
New  Testament  in  1830,  and  there  has  lately  appeared  a 
revised  edition,  done  under  the  supervision  of  Professor 
Prsetorius  of  Halle. 

Of  far  greater  importance  are  the  endeavours  of  the  missions 
to  supply  these  Churches  with  the  Bible  in  the  living  languages, 
understood  by  the  common  people.    This  has  been  an  integral 


406     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

part,  to  some  extent  even  the  basis,  of  their  work  of  evangeli- 
zation. In  Modern  Armenian  Dr.  Zohrab  of  Constantinople, 
himself  an  Armenian,  made  a  beginning  with  a  useful  transla- 
tion of  the  New  Testament,  which  was  published  first  in  1825 
and  has  been  repeatedly  revised  by  the  American  missionaries 
since,  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  doing  the  print- 
ing. The  translation  of  the  Old  Testament  was  begun  in  1840 
by  Dr.  Elias  Riggs,  with  the  assistance  of  his  colleague,  Adger, 
at  first.  The  complete  Bible  appeared  in  1852.  Up  to  his 
death  Riggs  continued  to  improve  his  work,  which  is  con- 
sidered by  experts  to  be  an  excellent  translation ;  the  Bible 
societies  of  America  and  Great  Britain  have  combined  to 
publish  it.  "  Ararat  Armenian "  is  a  dialect  which  varies 
considerably  from  the  other,  and  is  spoken  in  Russian  Caucasia 
and  Northern  Persia.  Into  it  the  Basle  missionaries,  especially 
A.  H.  Diettrich,  translated  the  New  Testament  in  1834,  the 
translation  being  repeatedly  issued  by  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society  until  1879,  when  it  was  thoroughly  revised  by 
Abraham  Amirkhanyanz,  who  translated  also  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. The  complete  Bible  appeared  in  this  dialect  in  1882, 
the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  publishing  it  in  Con- 
stantinople. 

The  highest  praise  is  due  to  the  American  missionary,  Dr. 
Justin  Perkins,  for  devoting  many  years  of  his  life  to  produc- 
ing a  useful  translation  of  the  Bible  into  Modern  Syriac.  The 
first  edition  of  the  New  Testament  appeared  in  1846,  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  the  Old  Testament  in  1852,  both  editions  having  the 
Ancient  Syriac  and  the  Modern  Syriac  in  columns  side  by  side, 
though  later  editions  contained  only  the  latter.  After  Perkins' 
death,  Dr.  Labaree  undertook  a  diligent  and  thorough  revi- 
sion. While  the  Urumiah  dialect  had  been  the  basis  of  former 
translations,  Dr.  Labaree  borrowed  from  the  purer  and  more 
widely  used  dialects  of  the  mountains,  making  use  of  the  help 
of  educated  Syrians  such  as  Professor  Yoshana  and  Professor 
Baba.  This  new  translation  appeared  in  an  attractive  edition 
in  New  York,  in  1893. 

Great  difficulties  were  connected  with  the  production  of  a 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  407 

Bulgarian  version,  since  there  are  so  many  dialects,  the  chief 
of  which  are  Western  and  Eastern  Bulgarian.  Under  the 
auspices  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  many  at- 
tempts were  made  between  the  years  1820  and  1858,  and  the 
Society  published  parts  of  translations  made  by  the  Bulgarian 
clergyman  Theodosius  in  1822,  by  Sapunoff  in  1827,  by  Barker 
of  Smyrna  in  1836-1840,  and  by  Photinoflf  in  1858.  The 
linguistic  diflBculties  were  only  overcome  when  the  talented 
American  missionary,  Elias  Riggs,  in  collaboration  with 
Dr.  A.  Long  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Mission,  succeeded  in 
forming  a  modern  Bulgarian  language  which  proved  intelli- 
gible to  and  popular  with  the  whole  nation.  This  translation 
was  used  from  1859  to  1864,  when  it  was  revised,  Riggs  him- 
self working  at  it  until  the  hour  of  his  death  on  the  17th  of 
January,  1901.  It  has  supplanted  all  the  other  translations, 
and  is  considered  an  excellent  piece  of  work. 

The  Albanian  language  has  also  two  essentially  different 
dialects,  the  Northern  or  Gheg  and  the  Southern  or  Tosh. 
Although  Protestant  missionaries  did  not  begin  to  work  here 
till  late,  and  have  made  little  headway  among  this  ancient 
Christian  people,  yet  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society 
began  in  1819  to  make  great  and  continued  exertions  to 
produce  the  New  Testament  in  both  these  dialects,  entrusting 
the  work  of  translation  to  native  Albanians  under  the  super- 
vision of  their  representative  in  Constantinople.  The  work  of 
printing  was  rendered  difficult  in  this  case  also  by  the  confu- 
sion of  alphabets.  At  length  it  was  decided  to  use  Roman 
characters  throughout.  Translations  of  the  New  Testament 
into  the  Southern  dialect  appeared  in  1825  and  1827,  by 
Evangelos  Mexicos,  in  1879,  by  Christoforides,  and,  later,  by 
Gerasius  Kyrios ;  and  into  the  Northern  dialect  since  1866  in 
Constantinople. 

For  the  Spanish  Jews  of  the  Near  East  there  already  ex- 
isted a  useful  translation  of  the  Bible,  the  so-called  Ferrara 
Bible,  which  was  published  repeatedly  in  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries,  whole  or  in  parts.  The  revision  of  this 
version  is  the  meritorious  work  of  Dr.  W.  G.  Schauffler  of  the 


4o8     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

American  Board  and  the  Scottish  missionaries,  Dr.  J.  Christie 
and  Rev.  D.  B.  Spence. 

Of  the  living  languages  of  Abyssinia  the  first  used  in  Bible 
translation  was  the  widely  spread  Amharic,  much  of  the  Bible 
having  been  translated  into  this  tongue  by  the  monk  Abu 
Buchi.  His  work  was  continued  by  the  missionaries  Isenberg 
and  Kugler,  the  whole  being  revised  by  Dr.  Krapf,  and  issued 
from  1844  to  1879,  at  the  expense  of  the  Bible  Society.  A 
second  edition,  revised  by  Dr.  Krapf,  M.  Flad  and  J.  Meyer, 
was  printed  in  the  St.  Chrischona  Mission  House  in  1888.  A 
translation  of  the  four  Gospels  into  Tigre,  one  of  the  Northern 
dialects  (the  other  being  called  Tigrina)  was  made  by  Isenberg, 
Kugler  and  Dr.  Krapf  (published  in  1865),  and  the  Gospel  ac- 
cording to  St.  Mark  was  translated  by  Swedish  missionaries  in 
Monkullo.  The  New  Testament  was  translated  into  Tigrina 
by  Swedish  missionaries,  especially  the  physician  Dr.  Winquist. 
This  work  is  being  gradually  published  by  the  Swedish  Mis- 
sion Press  in  Asmara.  Some  of  the  Gospels  have  been  trans- 
lated into  other  dialects  of  the  country,  into  Bogos  (Bilin),  into 
the  Falasha  dialect  of  the  Agau  (Professor  Rheinish  of  Yienna), 
into  Kunama  (the  Swedish  missionaries).  There  are  also  a 
goodly  number  of  translations  into  the  Galla  dialects;  in 
Northern  Galla  the  entire  Bible,  translated  by  the  native, 
Onesimus,  was  printed  in  1899  in  the  St.  Chrischona  Mission 
House.  In  the  Shoa  tongue  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament 
and  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  were  translated  by  Dr.  Krapf 
and  printed  in  1872.  In  the  Itta  dialect  a  translation  of  St. 
Matthew  was  made  by  a  Galla  youth,  Hailu.  In  the  Bararetta 
dialect,  St.  John's  Gospel  was  translated  by  the  Methodist 
missionary,  Wakefield,  and  printed  in  1890.  Considerable 
portions  of  an  ancient  ecclesiastical  translation  of  the  Bible  in 
the  Nuba  tongue  have  recently  been  discovered.  Prof.  R. 
Lepsius  has  translated  at  least  one  Gospel  into  Fadidja^  the 
present  language  of  the  Berbers  to  the  south  of  Assuan ;  the 
translation  is  printed  in  the  "standard  alphabet."  In  1885  it 
was  printed  in  Arabic  type  for  use  among  the  Beduins. 

(2)    On  this  immense  task  of  translating  and  printing  the 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  409 

Word  of  God  accurately  and  intelligibly  in  the  numerous 
languages  and  dialects  of  Western  Asia,  the  missions  and  Bible 
societies  have  spent  an  enormous  amount  of  labour  and 
money.  For  some  decades  they  received  considerable  assist- 
ance from  the  Russian  Bible  Society,  founded  by  the  Czar, 
Alexander  I,  and  from  the  Ionian  Bible  Society  in  Corfu. 
But  both  of  these  societies  were  dissolved  and  the  burden  fell 
upon  the  shoulders  of  the  British  and  the  American  Bible  So- 
cieties, which  were  assisted  to  a  limited  extent  by  the  Scottish 
National  Bible  Society,  in  Salonica,  Tiberias,  Saf  ed,  Aleppo  and 
Beirut.  Equally  difficult  was  the  other  great  task  of  distribu- 
ting the  Bible.  Here  the  two  great  societies  divided  the  work, 
the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  leaving  the  American 
Bible  Society  those  districts  in  which  the  American  mission- 
aries, especially  those  of  the  American  Board,  labour  exclu- 
sively or  preponderatingly,  such  as  Turkey  in  Europe  (the 
greater  part),  Asia  Minor,  the  northern  half  of  Persia,  Syria 
and  Upper  Egypt,  while  its  own  extensive  operations  com- 
prise three  "  agencies,"  one  in  Turkey,  with  its  chief  depot  in 
Constantinople,  another  in  Egypt,  with  its  headquarters  in 
Alexandria,  and  the  third  in  Persia,  having  its  main  station  in 
Ispahan.  As  far  as  possible  the  distribution  of  the  Bible  is 
carried  on  in  connection  with  the  missionary  societies, 
which  take  large  stocks  of  Bibles  and  portions  of  the  Bible, 
these  being  distributed  by  colporteurs,  Bible-readers  and  Bible- 
women,  who  are  partly  supported  by  the  Bible  Society.  But 
in  addition  to  these,  some  Bible  societies,  especially  the  Brit- 
ish and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  employ  their  own  colporteurs, 
who  work  in  the  great  commercial  centres,  especially  in  the 
polyglot  harbours  of  Port  Said  and  Constantinople,  where  the 
nations  of  the  world  meet.  In  Port  Said  there  is  an  annual 
sale  of  from  fifteen  to  eighteen  thousand  Bibles  and  portions 
of  the  Bible,  in  from  sixty  to  seventy  languages.  Perhaps 
even  more  important  is  the  work  of  the  colporteurs  in  pene- 
trating to  places  where  there  are  either  few  or  no  mission- 
aries, as  for  instance  in  Albania,  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  Eastern 
Persia  and  Northern  and  Eastern  Arabia. 


41  o     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

Generally  speaking,  Bible  distribution  is  possible  in  the 
whole  of  the  Near  East,  if  it  be  not  resisted  by  the  fanatical 
opposition  of  Muhammadans,  Jews  and,  sometimes,  even  of 
Christians,  especially  of  Christian  priests,  to  the  Christian  or 
"  Protestant "  Bible. 

In  Turkey,  to  be  sure,  there  was  the  petty  and  annoying 
censorship  to  be  faced.  Such  geographical  names  as  "  Mace- 
donia "  and  "  Armenia  "  were  not  permitted  to  be  published, 
and  had,  therefore,  to  be  avoided  as  far  as  possible  in  Bibles 
issued  in  the  Ottoman  Empire.  Maps  on  which  such  names 
occurred  were  torn  out.  Even  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians 
roused  suspicion  on  account  of  the  similarity  of  the  name 
"  Galatia  "  to  Galata,  the  name  of  a  quarter  of  the  city  of 
Stamboul,  and  it  even  happened  that  prudent  censors  de- 
manded the  production  of  St.  Paul's  death-certificate  to  prove 
that  his  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  is  not  a  revolutionary  article 
aimed  at  the  Sultan.  The  censorship,  also,  through  the  law 
that  any  books  introduced  into  Turkey,  or  any  edition  pro- 
duced there,  has  to  be  passed  by  the  censor,  offered  a  welcome 
opportunity  to  malicious  officials  to  keep  back  such  books  as 
did  not  please  them  for  months  and  years.  It  was  also  incon- 
venient that  in  the  parts  of  Turkey  which  are  inhabited  al- 
most exclusively  by  Muhammadans,  the  authorities  refused 
licenses  to  the  colporteurs,  if  they  would  not  promise  to  sell 
Bibles  only  in  villages  inhabited  by  Christians  or  Jews.  In 
Persia  trouble  has  latterly  been  caused  by  the  Persian  cus- 
toms officials,  who  will  pass  boxes  of  Bibles  for  that  country 
only  on  condition  that  the  missionary  and  Bible  societies 
promise  not  to  sell  to  Moslems,  which  is,  of  course,  out  of  the 
question.  Accordingly,  no  Bibles  have  entered  Persia  for 
some  years,  while  the  stock  kept  in  the  country  is  nearly  ex- 
hausted. Greece  is  the  only  country  in  the  Near  East  in 
which  (since  1901)  the  Bible  in  the  popular  tongue  has  been  a 
forbidden  book,  the  sale  of  which  is  punishable. 

The  question  is  sometimes  raised  whether  the  distribution 
of  Bibles  without  explanatory  preaching  is  wise,  since,  it  is 
said,  only  a  few  of  the  books  of  the  Bible  are  really  intelligible 


Missions  Among  the  Jews  41 1 

to  non-Christians.  In  Western  Asia  such  doubts  are  little  in 
place,  for  all  the  races  there  have  been  lovers  of  literature  to 
a  certain  extent  for  a  thousand  years  or  more,  and  they  all 
regard  the  Bible  as  a  holy  book,  with  an  undoubted  claim  to 
be  God's  Word,  even  though  Moslems  believe  it  to  have  been 
superseded  by  the  Koran,  and  Jews  reject  the  revelation  of 
God  in  the  New  Testament.  No  doubt  here,  as  everywhere 
else,  the  explanatory  teaching  of  the  missionary  is  of  extreme 
importance.  But,  in  face  of  the  barrier  which[the  prejudices  of 
Moslems,  Jews  and  Christians  belonging  to  the  ancient 
Churches,  oppose  to  such  preaching,  and  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  their  opposition  to  the  preaching  shuts  their  hearts  to  the 
simple  Gospel  in  every  form,  it  is  of  great  importance,  as  a 
form  of  pioneer  work,  to  supply  them  with  the  Word  of  God 
in  their  own  language,  trusting  them  to  prove  all  things  and 
to  keep  that  which  is  good.  Zwemer,  in  the  Bible  Society 
Report  of  1904,  p.  138,  says,  "  The  colporteur  is  the  best 
pioneer  for  the  missionary,  and  the  Bible  is  its  own  best  advo- 
cate, wherever  it  has  a  free  field,  in  opposition  to  the  Koran 
or  any  other  book  of  religion." 


VIII 

SUMMARIES  AND  STATISTICAL  TABLES 

THOUGH  statistics  are  indispensable,  they  present  no 
true  picture  of  the  work  that  is  really  being  done. 
Nor  can  statistics  for  the  same  period  be  obtained 
from  all  the  societies,  and  one  has  often  to  be  content  with 
figures  of  former  years.  From  some  of  the  smaller  societies, 
also,  no  figures  whatever  can  be  obtained,  and  one  can  only 
estimate  the  number. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  their  deficiencies,  the  tables 
which  follow  help  to  give  a  clear  picture  of  the  extent  and 
success  of  missionary  work  in  the  Near  East.  A  personnel  of 
299  ordained  and  lay  missionaries,  eighty-one  medical  mis- 
sionaries and  458  lady  missionaries  might  appear  insignificant 
in  so  great  a  mission  field.  Yet  395  organized  congregations, 
with  34,606  communicants  and  94,428  adherents,  are  evidence 
of  real  success,  when  one  considers  the  extraordinary  difficulties 
to  be  coped  with  ;  and  a  staff  of  225  ordained  native  assistants, 
in  addition  to  2,227  who  are  not  ordained,  prove  that  the 
congregations,  which  have  been  formed,  are  caring  for  the 
establishment  of  a  Protestant  ministry.  Hope  for  the  future 
lies  in  the  975  primary  and  secondary  schools  and  the  fifteen 
colleges,  with  their  64,016  pupils.  And  the  forty-nine  hos- 
pitals with  sixty-three  dispensaries,  in  which  666,975  patients 
are  annually  treated,  represent  the  sowing  of  the  seed  of  Chris- 
tian compassion  in  the  stony  ground  of  Muhammadanism. 

It  is  the  conviction  of  almost  all  the  Protestant  missionaries 
that  there  is  little  prospect  that  the  national  Churches  of  the 
Near  East  will  be  regenerated  by  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel. 
Yet  the  Protestant  congregations  are  centres  of  a  far-reach- 
ing influence  upon  them.  Hundreds  of  priests  of  these 
Churches  have  attended  Protestant  schools  in  their  youth,  and 
laymen,  who  have  also  been  educated  in  these  schools,  de- 

412 


Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables  413 

mand  Biblical  teaching  from  the  priests  in  their  sermons.  Nor 
is  it,  according  to  the  statement  of  Hoskins,  a  missionary  in 
Syria,  a  rare  thing  to  find  a  Greek  priest  preaching  Moody's 
sermons  year  after  year. 

A  great  disadvantage  to  Christianity  in  Western  Asia  is 
the  ever-increasing  emigration,  which,  while  also  affecting 
Muhammadanism,  is  much  more  common  among  oriental 
Christians,  and  especially  decimates  the  ranks  of  Protestants. 
Yet  it  is  an  advantage  that  the  greatest  stream  of  emigration 
is  in  the  direction  of  Egypt,  which  has  taken  a  mighty  up- 
ward bound  under  British  management,  for  the  strength  of 
the  Christian  element  there  is  thus  greatly  increased.  It  is 
also  a  consoling  thought  that  by  means  of  this  emigration  the 
value  of  the  schools  established  by  Protestant  missionaries  is 
being  recognized  far  more  widely  than  formerly.  This  leads 
also  to  greater  confidence  in,  and  respect  for,  the  missionaries, 
who  used  formerly  to  be  treated  with  malicious  hostility.  The 
hope  may  also  be  indulged  in,  that  Christian  emigrants,  after 
gaining  education,  political  experience  and  prosperity  abroad, 
will,  in  view  of  the  better  political  conditions  which  are  being 
established  in  their  home,  return  thither  to  be  a  blessing  to 
their  country. 

The  prospects  of  mission  work  among  Muhammadans  are 
still  everywhere  limited.  The  position  in  Egypt  is  relatively 
the  most  promising.  Here  there  are  already  1,262  Muham- 
madan  children  in  the  schools  of  the  American  Mission,  and 
the  lecturing  tours  of  Douglas  Thornton,  who  unfortunately 
died  so  soon,  prove  that,  to  a  considerable  extent,  preparatory 
preaching  is  possible,  if  it  be  carefully  prepared  and  prudently 
conducted.  In  the  Ottoman  Empire  the  Lebanon  is  the  most 
promising  district,  since  it  is  under  a  Christian  governor.  Yet 
even  here,  as  in  the  whole  of  Turkey,  public  preaching  to  Mu- 
hammadans is  forbidden.  A  perceptible  influence,  however, 
is  exercised  on  the  Muhammadan  population  by  means  of  hos- 
pitals, dispensaries,  Bible-women,  book-shops  and  colporteurs. 
In  the  rest  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  all  work  among  Muham- 
madans has  been  hindered  as  much  by  the  fanaticism  of  the 


414     History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 

common  people  as  by  the  suspicion  and  hostility  of  the  au- 
thorities. The  Panislamic  movement,  also,  embitters  the  re- 
lationship between  Moslems  and  Christians.  This  is  the  case 
most  of  all  in  Egypt,  though  it  is  very  perceptible  in  Syria 
also.  It  is  a  very  general  experience  in  the  Near  East  that 
missionary  work  among  Moslems  is  easier  where  it  is  con- 
nected with  a  like  work  among  Christians  and  Jews.  Faulty 
as  the  Christian  congregations  may  be,  and  evident  as  is  the 
Moslem's  contempt  for  the  Christians,  yet  the  Moslem  toler- 
ates missions  among  the  Christians,  and  cannot  escape  the  in- 
fluences which  go  out  from  them.  Where  such  a  basis  is  lack- 
ing, it  easily  happens  that  Moslem  sensitiveness  resents  his 
being  regarded  as  an  object  for  mission  work  by  the  "  Chris- 
tian dogs,"  a  barrier  being  thus  thrown  up,  which  only  the 
medical  mission  with  its  self-sacrificing  and  compassionate 
work  can  hope  to  break  down. 

Some  parts  of  the  Near  East,  particularly  Palestine,  Syria, 
Egypt  and  Northwestern  Persia,  are  the  working  place  of 
many  small  missionary  societies.  This  has  caused  a  great 
waste  of  energy.  It  is  pleasing  to  see  that  the  Church  Mis- 
sionary Society  in  Palestine  and  the  American  Presbyterians 
in  Syria  and  Persia  are  displaying  a  certain  power  of  assimi- 
lating smaller  missions,  and  are,  at  any  rate,  maintaining  a  de- 
cidedly preponderating  influence  by  the  extensive  and  solid 
work  they  do.  Closer  cooperation  among  Protestant  missions 
in  the  Near  East  is  extremely  desirable.  Only  once,  from  the 
13th  to  the  19th  of  August,  1901,  at  Brummana,  near  Beirut, 
has  there  been  an  international  conference  of  these  mission- 
aries. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  conferences  upon  mission  work 
among  Muharamadans  in  general  may  not  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  seriously  needed  consideration  of  the  problems,  methods 
and  difficulties  of  mission  work  as  a  whole  in  the  Near  East. 

For  Syria  and  Palestine  particularly  a  close  cooperation  of 
the  distracted  forces  in  a  unified  and  comprehensive  program, 
with  a  careful  apportionment  of  spheres  of  work,  would  be  a 
great  gain,  especially  in  the  ever-keener  competition  with  the 
Koman  and  Russian  Churches. 


Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables  415 

Oppressive  as  the  yoke  of  Turkey  and  Persia  has  been,  and 
obstructive  to  the  development  of  mission  work  as  their  arbi- 
trary measures  have  ever  proved,  yet  it  is  only  under  Muham- 
madan  governments  that  work  among  the  ancient  Churches 
has  been  possible.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that,  as  soon  as 
Oriental  Churches  obtain  autonomy,  as  in  Greece  in  1829  and 
in  Bulgaria  in  1870,  they  obstinately  shut  themselves  up 
against  Protestant  influence.  The  subjection  of  countries  in 
which  such  Churches  exist  to  Russia  has  also  meant  the  de- 
struction of  Protestant  missions.  Even  the  English  protect- 
orate in  Cyprus  hindered  Protestant  missionary  work,  and 
English  control  in  Egypt  was  far  less  helpful  than  might  have 
been  expected. 

So  it  is  in  lands  under  Turkish  rule,  where  the  missions 
have  in  times  of  need  received  the  powerful  and  benevolent 
protection  of  the  representatives  of  the  English  and  American 
governments,  that  mission  work  has  been  most  highly  organ- 
ized, and  that  Protestant  congregations  have  been  most  highly 
developed. 

It  is  true  of  Churches,  as  of  individual  Christians,  that  they 
live  in  proportion  as  Christ  lives  in  them.  He  does  Protestant 
missions  in  the  Near  East  a  bitter  injustice  who  refuses  to 
recognize  that  the  great  central  purpose  of  such  missions  has 
been  to  make  the  spirit  of  Christ  regnant  alike  in  church  life 
and  in  the  life  of  the  individual.  The  missionaries  are  con- 
vinced that,  unless  they  succeed  in  this  endeavour,  the  Oriental 
Churches  are  doomed.  Forced  to  form  separate  congregations, 
they  have  laid  themselves  open  to  the  accusation  of  prosely- 
tism.  Yet,  in  the  main,  they  have  been  dominated  through- 
out their  work  by  a  spirit  of  compassion  for  the  old 
Churches  which,  while  paying  divine  honours  to  Christ, 
have  become  Christless.  And  the  hope  survives  that,  when 
these  ancient  Churches  shall  have  been  permeated  anew 
with  the  spirit  of  their  Master,  they  will  receive  power  from 
on  high  to  fight  the  battles  of  the  Lord  among  the  Muham- 
madan  peoples  of  the  Near  East,  and  ultimately  to  gain  the 
victory. 


4i6    History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 


Syria  and  Palestine 


SOCIETIES 


Stations 


Foreign  StafE 


Amer.  Presbyterian  Miss.  Board  (North) 

Irish  Presbyterian  Mission 

English  Presbyterian  Mission 

Danish  Orient  Mission 

Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses'  Homes  .... 

Amer.  Reformed  Presbyterians 

Scotch  and  Irish  Reformed  Presbyterians 

British  Syrian  School  Society 

English  Friends'  Miss.  Association     .    .    . 
Palestine  and  Lebanon  Nurses'  Mission    . 

Church  Miss.  Society 

Jaffa  Medical  Mission 

Syrian  Orphanage 

Jerusalem  Union 

Moravian  Church  Mission 

London  Jewish  Mission  (Asiatic  Missions 

of  the  Society) 

Mildmay  Mission 

German  Order  of  St.  John 

The  Dufferin  and  Procter  Memorial  Schools 
Edinburgh  Medical  Miss.  Society  .... 

Tabitha  Mission 

Amer.  Friends'  Mission 

Amer.  Alliance  Mission 

Syrian  Protestant  College 


102 
5 

3 

2 

6 

2 

49 


56 
354 


Total 57  204  99  23 


58   175 


Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables 


417 


Syria  and 

Palestine 

Native  Agency 

Congregations 

Schools 

Medical  Mission 

^ 

-1 

'2 
a 

a 

4) 

1 

■3 

a 
3 
5 

5 

a 

1 

a 

1 

eg 

3 

1 

1 

5 

4) 

1 

10 

216 
10 
4 

2,744 
200 

4,000f?) 
300 

115 
4 
2 

5,688 

542 

50 

3 

8,205 

2 

80 

140 

2 

7 

50 
628 

1 
2 

2 

5,000(?) 
11,135 

1 

23 
6 

224 

40 

401 

40 

7 

280 

2 

1 

7,100 

84 

1 

42 

40 

2,630 

3 

12,260 

26 

14 

82 

100 

16 

1,057 

1 

1 

2,936 

5 

5 

2 

1 

1 

1,907 

11 

47 

8 

59 
4 

864 

2,414 
131 

1 

60 

48 
3 

2,549 
364 

3 

1 

5 
2 

54,248 
22,340 

2 

22 

200 

336 

6 

532 

1 

50 

1 

45 

4' 

12 
2 

856 
50 

2 

3 
1 

1 

42,370 

1,000 

14,157 

1 

14  , 
10 

2 
4 

50 
226 

2 

1 

18,427 

2 

32 

70 

6 

250 

1 

4 

2 

50 

27 

1 

365 

1 

456 

1 

26 

443 

196 

3,462 

7,932 

3 

467 

183 

16,306 

19 

23 

201,135 

41 8      History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 
European  and  Asiatic  Turkey. 


Stations 

Foreign 

Staff 

1 
1 

a 

•s 

'E 
O 

1 

'i 

SOCIETIES 

i 

eg 

1 

'i 

■si 

in 
> 

•1 

a 

a 

13 

1 

1.  American  Board 

20 

269 

42 

12 

63 

68 

185 

2.  Methodist  Episcopal  Mission 

3.  Kaiserevverth  Deaconesses'  Homes  .... 

1 
2 

15 

1 

1 

2 

32 

4 

4.  Lohmauu's  Armenian  Aid  Association  .    . 

5 

10 

9 

1 

7 

33 

50 

5.  Dr.  Lepsius'  German  Orient  Mission      .    . 

2 

4 

1 

2 

7 

6.  Friends'  Armenian  Mission 

1 

1 

2 

7.  Disciples  (Foreign  Christ.  Miss.  Soc.)    .    . 

8.  Araer.  Ref.  Presbys.  (Cilioia  and  Cyprus) 

9.  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  .... 

3 

1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

1 

2 

8 

1 

Total      .    . 

35 

296 

61 

16 

72 

141 

255 

Persia.     Arabia 

Mesopotamia 

stations 

Foreign  Staff 

SOCIETIES 

a 
1 

S 
1 

'S 
'E 
O 

S 

1 

is 
•si 

> 

a 

1 

1.  Amer.  Presbyterian  Miss.  Board  (North)  . 

2.  Church  Miss,  society      JT^JrArabia 

3.  Herman  nsburg  Miss.  Society 

4.  London  Jewish  Mission  Society 

5.  Dr.  Lepsius'  German  Orient  Mission     .    . 

6.  Amer.  Lutheran  Mission 

7.  Minor  Missions  among  the  Nestorians  .    . 

5 
5 
2 

2 
1 

3 

1 
3 
1 

1 

64 
1 

2 

1 

6 

4 
1 

79 

17 
10 

1 

1 

1 

6 
1 
9 

1- 
1 

48 

10 
8 
3 

2 
2 

25 

21 

12 

3 

6 
2 

44 

11 

12 
3 

3 

2 

5 

59 

42 

9 

4 
3 

6 

9.  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  .... 

10.  (Dutch)  Reformed  Mission 

11.  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland     .... 

12.  Danish  Church  Mission 

1 

22 

5 

1 

Total 

25 

36 

153 

Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables 
Asia  Minor.     Armenia 


419 


Native  Ageucy 

Congregations 

Schools 

Medical  Mission 

^ 

,| 

-t 

a 

a 
0 

Hi 

a 

1 

1 

0 

a 

a 

"o 

-2 
S 

(^  8 

0 

■ft 

5 

0 

:j 

t^ 

0 

<1 

0 

cc 

M 

Hi 

w 

M 

Ph 

92 

830 

15,7-18 

41.802 

8 

1,232 

353 

20,861 

7 

11 

109,863 

17 

2 

426 

547 

1 
3 

20 
490 

1 

1 

1,430 

6 

71 

108 

21 

1,900 

2 

3 

4,856 

1 

5 

2 

1 

300 
400 

1 

1 

2,848 

2 

200 

200 

23 

98 

100 

5 

308 

1 

1 

7,888 

118 

931 

108 

16,472 

42,649 

8 

1,232 

386 

24,379 

12 

17 

126,885 

Persia 

Arabia. 

Mesopotamia 

Native  Agency- 

Congregations 

Schools 

Medical  Mission 

-d 

'3 

a 

il 

s 

's 

S 

.3 
158 

a 
? 

i 

.a 

1 

2 

a 

.3 
■ft 

■ft 

1 

2 

24 

3,189 

5,000  (?) 

1 

80 

2,770 

4 

8 

41,301 

1 

16 

12 

189 

4i2 

9 

423 

3 

2 

78,980 

. 

7 

7 

77 

210 

4 

234 

1 

11,383 

2 

1 
2 
3 

2 

400 
250 

719 
400 

4 
2 
2 

1 

190 
32 

120 
56 

6 

17 

200 

23 

800 

17 

5 

5 

137 

2 

1 

34,305 

3 

lo. 

1 

39,221 

33 

224 

19 

4,105 

7,048 

1 

150 

4,756 

11 

11 

205,190 

420       History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the  Near  East 


Egypt.     Sudan 

Abyssinia 

Stations 

Foreign  Staff 

SOCIETIES 

1 

1 

1 
1 

•s 

o 

1 

a 

is 

1 

a 

a 
t) 

35 
19 

8 
30 
2 
3 
9 

1 

1.  American  United  Presbyterian  Mission     . 

2.  Church  Missionary  Society 

3.  Netherlands  Miss,  to  Egypt  (Vereenigiug  tot 

Uitbreiding  van  het  Evangelic  inEgypte) 

4.  Egypt  General  Mission ... 

5.  Kaiserswerth  Deaconesses'  Homes  .... 

6.  Sudan  Pioneer  Mission      

7.  North  African  Mission 

8.  Swedish  National  Miss.  Soo 

9.  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Soo 

12 

7 

1 
5 
2 

2 
2 
6 

125 
2 

2 

8 

48 
7 

2 

7 

2 

3 

21 

1 

12 
4 

1 

29 
5 

4 

1 
2 
14 

124 
35 

2 
19 
30 

6 

8 
44 

1 

38 

137 

91 

17 

55 

106 

269 

Summary 

of  Statistics 

stations 

Foreign  Staff 

SOCIETIES 

i 

S 

1 

i 

ss 

1 

141 

175 

36 

106 

458 

1 

Turkey            

35 

57 
25 
38 

296 

204 

79 

137 

716 

61 
99 

48 
91 

9,99 

16 
23 
25 

17 

81 

72 
58 
44 
55 

229 

255 

354 

Persia 

153 

269 

Total                 

155 

1,031 

Summaries  and  Statistical  Tables 


421 


Egypt 

.     Sudan. 

Abyssinia 

Native  Agency 

Cougregationa 

Schools 

Medical  Mission 

5 

Ti  0 

'2 

a 

1 

0 

a 

a 

1 

<1 

1 

S 

a 
w 

l| 

1 

-2 

1 

5 
1 

45 

519 

9,895 

35,058 

3 

840 

187 

16,255 

3 

7 

56,476 

16 

25 

92 

193 

11 

557 

2 

1 

31,289 

2 

68 

272 

2 

140 

15 

4 

7 
1 

315 
63 

2 

2 
2 

17,000 
2,900 

3 

1 

1 
3 

70 
165 

3 

59 
15 

5 

61 

512 

1,276 

44 

1,010 

48 

629 

96 

10,567 

36,799 

3 

840 

256 

18,575 

7 

12 

133,765 

Summary  of  Statistics 


Native  Agency 

Congregation3 

Schools 

Medical  Mission 

1 

a 

0 

5 
a 

J 
a 

a 

3 

1 

5 

g 

ll 

1 

.1 

-2 

118 
26 
33 

48 

931 
443 
224 
629 

108 

196 

19 

96 

16,472 
3,462 
4,105 

10,567 

42,649 
7,932 
7,048 

36,799 

8 
3 
1 
3 

1,232 

467 

840 
2,539 

386 
183 
150 
256 

24,379 

16,306 

4,756 

18,575 

12 
19 
11 

7 

17 
23 
11 
12 

120,885 
201,135 
205,190 
133,765 

225 

2,227 

419 

34,606 

94,428 

15 

975 

64,016 

49 

63 

666,975 

Index 


Abadiye,  204 

Abassides,  The,  35,  59,  182 

Abbas  Effendi,  291,  338 

Abdi  Effendi,  173,  175 

Abdul  Hamid  II,  35,  137-140,  153 

Abdul  Kadr  el  Jilani,  29 

Abdu!  Mejid,  218 

Abeih,  191,  194,  198,  213,  222 

Abu  Abdallah,  183 

Abu  Bekr,  Khalif,  29,  183 

Abu  Ruchi,  379,  408 

Abu  Sufian,  280 

Abuna  of  Abyssinia,  The,  364,  375  f. 

Abyssinia,  19,  53,  57,  354  f.,  371-390 

Abyssinian  Church,  The — see   Oriental 

Churches 
Acca,  249,  252,  291 
Adabazar,  114,  121 
Adana,  115,  157  f.,  214 
Aden,  22,  27,  273  f.,  360 
Adger,  406 
Adi  Ugri,  387 
Adigrat,  380 
Adis  Abeba,  389 
Adowa,  380  f. 

Adrianople,  44,  104,  172,  398 
Aghtamar,  45 
Ahmed  Tewfik,  176 
Ailet,  387 
Aimerich,  48 
Ain  Arik,  257 
Ain  Karim,  257 
Ain  Zehalteh,  194 
Aintab,  115,  125,  131,  133,  155  ff.,  159, 

162,  194 
Akhissar,  140 
Akhmed  Akhsai,  286 
Akhram,  183 
Alamut,  185 

Albania,  49,  53,  104,  169,  409 
Albanians,  The,  24,  i7of. 
Albistan,  162 

Aleppo,  115,  172,  194,  409 
Alexander  I,  98 
Alexandria,  45  f.,  339,  345,  347,  356  f., 

394.  398  f.,  409 
Ali,  Khalif,  35,  182,  280 
All  Bey,  401 
Ali  Ilahi,  The,  326 


Ali  Muhammad,  287,  290 

Alliance  Israelite,  The,  327,  394 

Alma,  188,  194 

Amara,  277 

Amasia,  117,  140 

American  Bible  Society,  174,  2i6, 402ff., 

409 
American   Board,   Missions  of,  70,  71  ; 

among  the  Jews,  390,  395  ;  in  Persia, 

294-303 ;  in  Syria  and  Palestine,  185- 

201,  235  f.;  in  Turkey  and  Armenia, 

56,  102,  106-135 
American  Colony  in  Jerusalem  (Spaf- 

fordites),  234 
American  Sisters,  The,  55 
Amhara,  372,  378  f. 
Amharic  language,  91,  95 
Amirkhanyanz,  Abraham,  403,  406 
Amm.iel  Mission,  The,  258 
Amr,  26,  45,  363 

Anatoha  College,  56,  131,  135,  157 
Anderson,  Rufus,  106 
Andreas,  F.  C,  286 
Anglican  Mission  in  Persia,  308  ff. 
Ankober,  381 
Antioch,  162,  210 
Antuf,  186 
Anyok,  The,  370 

Apostles'  Road,  The,  262,  354  f.,  379 
Appia,  Miss,  207 

Arab  Conquest,  The,  13  f.,  39,  45,  271  f. 
Arabi  Pasha,  339,  360 
Arabia,  17,  19,  24,  28, 105,271-278,409 
Arabic  language,  The,  20,  39  f.,  50,  57, 

63.95'  196,  232,  27 If.,  359 
Arabistan,  334 
Arabkir,  1 16,  140,  159 
Arabs,  The,  23,  230 
Arakel,  102  f. 
Argos,  no,  165 
Ariopolis,  165 
Armash,  105 
Armenia,   11,   21,  24,  62,  98,  105,  1 18, 

135.  137.  149.  153  ff-.  159  f- 
Armenian  Aid  Society,  The,  150 
Armenian    Church,   The — see   Oriental 

Churches 
Armenian  Massacres,  The,  41,  66,  1 18, 

140-153,  155,  162,  260,  316 


423 


424 


Index 


Armenian  Orphanage,  The,  260 

Armenian  Schools,  iii,  159 

Armenians,  The,  23,  25,  43  ff.,  99,  1 10, 
135  f-.  152,  156.  181,  233,298,318- 
329,  333,  340 

Armeno-Turkish  language,  The,  45, 
106,  108 

Arnold,  Miihleisen,  210 

Arnott,  Miss  Walker,  257 

Arnoutkoyi,  157 

Arrhenius,  389 

Arsazides,  The,  41 

Artuf,  255 

Asad  es  Shidiak,  188 

Asadurian,  A.,  402 

Asfuriyeh,  205 

Ashkenazim,  The,  393 

Asia  Minor,  23,  28,  37,  39,  91,96,  105  f., 
117,  126,  133 

Asia  Minor  Medical  Missionary  Associa- 
tion, The,  158 

Asir,  105 

Asian  Sahagian,  159 

Assassmes,  The,  1845. 

Assemani,  J.  S.,  47 

Assiut,  46,  56,  74,  348 fif.,  352f. 

Assuan,  345,  354f.,  357.  3^9 

Assumptionists,  The,  55 

Astrakhan,  98 

Assyrian  Mission,  The,  309,  313 

Assyrian  Mission  of  the  American  Board, 
ii6f. 

Atbara,  369 

Athanasius,  37 

Athens,  165  ff. 

Athlit,  232 

Atil,  206 

Auso  Kunoma,  388 

Avakian,  Ohannes,  141 

Awetaranian,  Johannes,  l6l 

Awishalum  Mission,  The,  315 

Axum,  376,  378 

Ayesha,  280 

Azerbaijan,  279,  292,  3l6f.,  325 

Azo,  145 

Baaklin,  206 

Baalbek,  203  f. 

Babism,  286-291 

Babists,  The,  249,  281 

Babylon,  13 

Badger,  G.  P.,  309  f. 

Bagdad,  100,  105,  l63f.,  290,  330,  399 

Bahrein,  276 

Baiburt,  140 

Baker,  Sir  Samuel,  365 


Baku,  99,  155 

Balearic  Isles,  The,  21 

Balkan  Peninsula,  The,  II,  17,  23,  37, 
57,  68,  89,  167 

Banias,  214 

Baptist  Missions,  165  f.,  257,  315 

Baratieri,  General,  375 

Barclay,  Joseph,  245 

Bari,  The,  371 

Barnum,  Henry  S.,  no 

Barton,  Dr.,  405 

Barun,  The,  370 

Basil  the  Great,  37,  117 

Basilides,  Negus,  91 

Basle  Mission,  The,  96-103,  378 

Basra,  105,  164,  276  f. 

Baz,  317 

Beaconsfield,  Lord,  176 

Bebek,  no  f.,  126,  130,  157 

Bedouins,  The,  24,  208,  210,  273 

Bedr  Khan,  293,  309 

Bedros,  115 

Beha  Ullah,  291 

Behais,  The,  328 

Behnesseh,  93 

Beirut,  105,  178,  186,  189,  191,  203  f., 
207,  217,  222  ff.,  398,  409 

Beirut  Mission  Press,  The,  190,  215,  347 

Beirut  Seminary,  The,  222 

Beit  Jala,  40,  260 

Beit  Meri,  204 

Beit  Sahur,  40,  260 

Bellamy,  206 

Bellesa,  387 

Benedictines,  The,  55 

Benha,  352  f. 

Beni  Suef,  352 

Beranduz,  304 

Berbers,  The,  337,  408 

Berlin  Congress,  The,  136,  154,  167 

Bethany,  55 

Betharram,  55 

Bethlehem,  40,  55,  240,  249,  252,  2595,, 
270 

Beyan,  The,  289 

Bible,  The,  publication  of  in  ancient  lan- 
guages, 405 ;  translation  of  into  mod- 
ern languages,  196  f.,  296  f.,  325,  37 1, 
379  f-.  3S5.  389.  399-408 

Bible  Lands'  Mission  Aid  Society,  The, 
119 

Bible  Societies,  Work  of  the,  400-41 1 

Bilbeis,  356 

Bird,  Frank,  186 

Biredjik,  145 

Bisharin  Bedouins,  The,  357 


Index 


425 


Bishop,  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird,  308 

Bishop  Gobat's  School,  252,  262 

Bithynia,  1 14,  I2I,  166 

Bitlis,  105,  116,  139  f.,  145,  150  f.,  159 

Blind,  Work  among  the,  203,  404 

Bliss,  Daniel,  213,  218 

Bliss,  Howard,  213 

Blumenhagen,  91 

Blumhardt,  T.,  97 

Blyth,  G.  F.  P.,  234,  245,  256 

Bohtan,  300 

Bonar,  Andrew,  205 

Bor,  370 

Borneo,  36 

Bosnia,  19,  21,  49,  170,  179 

Bottcher,  Immanuel,  261 

Bradford,  Dr.  Mary,  321 

Brandeis,  383 

Brethren  of  the  Holy  Gabriel,  The,  52 

British  and   Foreign  Bible  Society,  98, 

106,  173  f.,  402  ff.,  409 
Brothers  of  Christian  Schools,  The,  55 
Brothers  of  Mercy,  The,  55 
Brown,  Chaplain  in  India,  93 
Browne,  E.  G.,  286 
Browne,  W.,  310 
Bruce,  Robert,  164,  329  ff.,  404 
Brummana,  204 
Brusa,  114,  121 
Bryce,  James,  135,  149 
Bsherreh,  47 

Buchanan,  Chaplain  in  India,  93 
Bulgaria,  19,  21,  23,  38,  50,  62,  73,  I04, 

167  f.,  170,  179 
Bulgarians,    The,    25,    37  ff. ;    missions 

among,  167- 1 70 
Bulwer,  Henry,  175 
Burgess,  Miss,  162 
Butros,  Koptic  Patriarch,  96,  345 
Butros  Bistani,  197 
Byblus,  48 
Byzantium,  43  ff. 

C^SAREA,  117,  133,  157 

Cairo,  15,  46,  56,  93,  96,  344-361,  399 

Calhoun,  S.  H.,  222 

Calliupolita,  Maximus,  90 

Cantine,  James,  276 

Cappadocia,  117 

Capuchins,  The,  53,  56 

Carmelites,  The,  55 

Carslaw,  205 

Casakos,  G.,  402 

Cassai,  378 

Cassandra,  397 

Caucasus,  The,  44 


Caucasus  Mission,  The,  97-103 

Cederquist,  K.,  389 

Censorship,  The,  171,  216,  320,  331, 
410 

Central  Turkey  College,  The,  157 

Ceylon,  19 

Chaldean  Church— see  Oriental  Churches 

Chalki,  64 

Charbash,  304 

Charigushi,  304 

Charles  Martel,  21 

Charmetant,  149 

Chios,  62 

Christ  Church,  Jerusalem,  256 

Christian  School  Brothers,  The,  52 

Christie,  J.,  408 

Chrysostom,  John,  37 

Church  Missionary  Society,  The,  94,  97, 
103  ;  Mediterranean  Mission  of,  94- 
97,  358 ;  missions  of,  in  Abyssinia, 
378-382;  in  Egypt,  344  f.,  358-362; 
in  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  367,  369  ff. ; 
in  Persia,  329-334;  in  Syria  and  Pales- 
tine, 205  f.,  234,  242-254,  257  ;  in 
Turkey  and  Armenia,  163  f.,  173-176 

Cilicia,  122,  135,  163,  209 

Circassians,  The,  136,  339 

Cochran,  Joseph,  307,  315,  321 

Codrington,  157 

Ccele-Syria,  198,  213 

Colebrooke,  403 

Collegiate  and  Theological  Institute, 
The,  170 

Colportage,  276  f.,  325,  334,  347  f.,  409- 
411 — see  also  Literature 

Constantinople,  15,  50,  59,  91,  92,  95  f., 
100,  104,  107,  119,  121,  123, 129, 132, 
140,  157, 162,  166 

Cook,  Miss  Jane,  395 

Cooper,  Miss,  242 

Corrie,  93 

Corsica,  21 

Cossacks,  The,  1525. 

Covenanters,  The — see  Presbyterians 

Crimean  War,  The,  36,  128,  136,  172 

Crischona  Brethren,  The,  347,  354,  382- 

385 
Cromer,   Lord,  79,   337,  359,  362,  367- 

370 
Crusades,  The,  14,  47  f.,  55,  184 
Cuinet,  105 
Curzon,  Lord,  318 
Cutts,  E.  L.,  309 

Cyprus,  21,  23,  38,  165,  189,  209  f. 
Cyprus  Convention,  The,  136 
Cyril  X,  343,  345 


426 


Index 


Damascus,  43,   186,   199,  203  f.,  207, 

223,  272,  344,  389 
Danish  Mission  in  Arabia,  274 
Danish  Orient  Mission,  208 
Darawi,  357 
Darazi,  183 
Darua,  384 

De  le  Roi,  383,  392,  395 
Debs,  47 
Degala,  304 
Deir  el  Kamr,  192,  194 
Demetrius  II,  Patriarch,  347 
Demirji,  166 
Derratiye,  208 
Dervish      Orders,      29  fF. ;        Kadirija, 

Sanussiyah,  Tiyaniyah,  31,  33;   Aisa- 

wiya,  Maulawiya,  Rufaiya,  32 
Deutsch,  Einil,  84 
Dhala,  274 
Diarbekr,   43,    105,    Ii6ff.,    122,   140  f., 

157  ff.,  176 
Dietels,  R.  W.,  371 
Diettrich,  A.  H.,  99,  I02,  406 
Dinka,  The,  370 
Diodorus  of  Tarsus,  40 
Disciples  of  Christ  (Campbellites),  162 
Disselhoff,  202 
Dodge,  235 
Dolaib,  370 
Dominicans,  55 
Dondukoff,  154 
Dongola,  363  f. 
Dome,  91 
Druses,  24,  81,  182  ff.,  190,  192  f.,  198, 

200,  204-207,  229,  249,  281 
Duleika  um  el  jun,  232 
Dulip  Singh,  346 
Dunkards,  315 

Dutch  Mission  in  Egypt,  355  f. 
Dutch  Reformed  Mission  in  Arabia,  276 
Duzza,  309 
Dwight,  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  107  f.,  i  lo, 

401 
Dwight,  Henry  Otis,  no 

East  Roman  Church,  37 

East  Roman  Empire,  14,  37,  43 

East  Syrian  Church,  40 

Eastern  Persia  Mission,  317 

Echmiadzin,  44,  58,  102 

Eddy,  Dr.  Mary,  217 

Eddy,  W.  W.,  198 

Edessa — see  Urfa 

Edinburgh  Medical  Mission  Association, 

208,  214,  258 
Educational  work,  65  f.,  70,  74  f.,  80,  96, 


98  f.,  no,  128,  157,  164;  among  the 
Jews,  395,  398  ff. ;  in  Abyssinia,  386  ; 
in  Arabia,  274,  277  f.;  in  Bulgaria, 
170 ;  in  Persia,  295  f.,  296,  306  f., 
310,  317,  320,  322  ff.,  331  f. ;  in  Syria 
and  Palestine,  191,  202-207,  217, 
221  ff.,  228,  236,  242,  249,  25 if., 
255  ff.,  260,  265  f.,  267  f. ;  in  Turkey 
and  Armenia,  107  f.,  iiof.,  123-126, 
128,  131  ff.,  156  f,,  162,  168 

Egypt,  13,  17  f.,  19.  21  ff,  29,  37,39, 
43.  45.  58,  63,  91  f.,  96,:i83, 337-371 ; 
mission  work  in,  78  f.,  81,  344-371 

Egyptian  General  Mission,  The,  356  f. 

El  Azhar  University,  343,  359 

El  Hasa,  272,  276 

Elias,  Bishop,  302 

Emigration  from  the  Near  East,  l6o, 
224  f.,  306  f. 

Ennedi,  23 

Ephrem  Syrus,  40 

Epirus,  104 

Episcopalian  Mission  (American),  165  f. 

Episcopate  of  Jerusalem,  236-239,  245 

Eppler,  C.  F.,  97,  100,  103 

Eppstein,  J.  M.,  398 

Eritrea  (Erythrea),  19,  53,  375,  387 

Erzerum,  105,  116,  118,  140  f.,  151, 
158  f. 

Erzingyan,  140 

Es  Salt,  248,  252 

Et  Tayyibeh,  257 

Ethel  Pain  Memorial  Hospital,  The,  361 

Euphrates  College,  The,  56,  131,  135, 
157.  '59 

Eusebeia,  The,  167 

Ezra,  206 

Falasha  The,  376  f.,  382-386 

Falconer,  Ion  Keith,  273 

Fallscheer,  Christian,  243 

Famaka,  3S9 

Fanariots,  The,  59 

Fatimide  Dynasty,  The,  183,  342 

Fayum,  The,  353 

Fehim  Pasha,  139 

Female    Education   Society,  The,   244, 

249,  253 
Ferrette,  208 
Fia  Bey,  139 

Fidelia  Fiske  Seminary,  The,  302,  306 
Fiske,  Fidelia,  294,  302 
Fiske,  Pliny,  185,  235,  296 
Fjellstedt,  P.,  96 
Flad,  J.  M.,  377,  383  ff.,  408 
Fliedner,  T.  H.,  202,  267,  357 


Index 


427 


Ford,  Miss,  207 

Fossum,  314 

Fovvett,  William,  96 

Franciscans,  The,  52,  55 

Frederick  William  IV,  237  ff. 

French,  Bishop  T.  V.,  75,  275  f.,   330, 

334 
Friedlaender,  Z.  H.,  255,  395 
Friends,  The,  162,  204 
Frumentius,  371 
Fulbe,  The,  22 

Gairdner,  H.  G.,  361 

Galla,  The,  337,  372,  386  ff.,  390 

Garabed,  123 

Garabed  Khalujian,  144 

Gass,  90 

Gates,  C.  F.,  131 

Gawar,  300 

Gaza,  249,  252 

Geez  language,  64,  376 

Geiger,  Abraham,  84 

Geleb,  388 

Geogtapa,  298,  304,  308 

Gerard  Academy,  The,  222 

German  Evangelical  Benevolent  Society. 

The,  162 
Ghazali,  30 
Giffen,  F.  K.,  370 
Ginsberg,  J.  B.  C.,  396 
Girgeh,  46 
Gladstone,  142 
Glen,  William,  319,  403 
Gobat,   Bishop    Samuel,   123,    162,  201, 

236,  239-248,  258  f.,  261,  354,  378  ff., 

382 
Godet,  151 
Gojam,  372 
Gondar,  92,  373 
Gondokoro,  365 

Goodell,  Wm.,  106  ff.,  186,  197,  402 
Gordon,  General,  364,  366  f. 
Gordon  Memorial  Mission,  The,  367 
Grace,  Watson,  204 
Gracey,  168 
Graham,  207  f. 
Grant,  Asahel,  295  f.,  300  f. 
Greece,  21,  23,  37  f.,  50,  73,  165,  l66f., 

415 
Greek  language,  37,  38  f.,  64,  95,  232 
Greek  Orthodox  Church — see  Oriental 

Churches 
Greek  War  of  Independence,  96,  106, 

164,  189,  402 
Greeks,  The,  23,  25,  37,  63 ;  missions 

among,  164-167 


Gregorians,  The— see  Oriental  Churches 

Gregory  the  Great,  37 

Gregory  the  Illuminator,  43 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  37,  117 

Groves,  Antony,  164 

Guinness,  Grattan,  357 

Gulpashan,  304 

Gundet,  374 

Gura,  374 

Gurun,  148 

Gwalla,  370 

Hadramaut,  273 

Hadj,  The,  20 

Hadjin,  115,  118 

Haftdewan,  320 

Hagop,  Pattian,  145 

Haifa,  55,  223,  230,  234  f.,  257,  261,  270 

Haig,  General,  273,  358,  367 

Hakim  ba  amr  Allah,  183 

Hakkiari,  300 

Hakob,  102 

Hakob,  Abuhayatian,  102 

Haleb,  105,  162,  194,  211 

Hall,  Dr.,  370 

Hamadan,    279,   318  ff.,   322,   325-328, 

399 
Hamath,  194,  217 
Hamidiye  regiments,  138  ff,,  153 
Hamlin,  Cyrus,  III,  126 f.,  I31 
Hamza,  183 
Harar,  389 

Harpur,  Dr.,  273,  360,  367 
Harris,  J.  Rendel,  139,  149 
Hasan  el  Askari,  184 
Hasan  ibn  Sabah,  184 
Hasbeiya,  194,  203 
Haskeui,  no 
Hatti  Humayoun,  The,  79,  172  f,,  2IO, 

347.  35 1 
Hattin,  232 

Hauran,  The,  200,  249 
Hausa  (Haussa),  The,  22  34,  337 
Heber,  Reginald,  93 
Hebron,  256  f.,  260 
Hego,  Cornelius,  90 
Hejaz  Railway,  The,  178,  223,  272 
Helwan,  361 
Henry   Martyn   Memorial    Press,    The, 

331 
Hepworth,  142 
Herrick,  George  F.,  no,  401 
Herzegovina,  21,  62,  179 
Heyling,  Peter,  91-93 
Hicks  Pasha,  366 
Hijaz,  105 


428 


Index 


Hilarion,  Abbat  in  Constantinople,  95 

Hildner,  F.  A.,  96 

Hill,  165  f. 

Hocker,  Rudolph  Wilhelm,  92  f, 

Hodeida,  273,  360,  367 

Hoffmann,  Christoph,  234 

Hoffmann,  W.,  97 

Hogg,  John,  345,  352 

Holmes,  G.  W.,  321 

Holy  Land,  The — see  Palestine 

Homs,  194,  217 

Hornle,  E.  F.,  330 

Hoyer,  274 

Hunchiagists  (Hunkachists),  The,  138 

Hurgronje,  Snouck,  28,  32 

Hylander,  N.,  389 

Ibrahim  Pasha,  189,  192 

Idlib,  211 

Hat,  The,  279 

Imaduddin,  loi 

Imamites,  The,  182,  184 

Imams,  Doctrine  of  the,  27,  281,  287  f. 

Independent  missionaries,  80,  258,  314 

Insane,  Work  for  the,  204  f. 

International  College,  The,  157 

Ionian  Bible  Society,  The,  409 

Iran  Bethel  School,  The,  326 

Irish  Presbyterian  Missions  among  the 
Jews,  390,  398 ;  in  Damascus,  207  f. 

Isaac,  Deacon,  302  f. 

Isenberg,  C.  W.,  354,  378-382,  408 

Islam  (Muhammadanism),  Attempts  at 
reform  in,  28,  33;  causes  of  decay 
in,  23  f. ;  democratic  nature  of,  36 ; 
ethics  of,  83,  86  ff.,  286;  in  Egypt, 
337  f. ;  loss  of  temporal  power  by, 
21  ff.,  37  f.;  mysticism  of,  83,  283- 
286 ;  propagation  of,  34  f.,  270  f., 
37of. ;  sects  of,  27,  182,  280-294; 
sources  of  strength  in,  29  ff. ;  theol- 
ogy of.  30.  81-84 

Ismail  Pasha,  182,  338,  346,  365 

Ismail  Safi  Shah,  281 

Ismailites,  The,  182,  184,  281 

Ispahan,  333  f.,  409 

Itineration,  325  f.,  347 

Itshan,  146 

Jacob  el  Baradai,  42 
Jacobite  Church — see  Oriental  Churches 
Jacobites,  The,  64,  117,  122,  181,  340 
Jaffa,  235,   239  f.,    240,  245,  256  f.,  261, 

270,  318,  329,  333  f. 
Jaffa  Medical  Mission,  The,  257 
Jalalud  Din  Rumi,  282 


Jamal  ud  Din,  291 

Janissaries,  The,  61,  9 1 

Jannina,  166 

Jebel  ed  Druz,  182 

Jenanyan,  H.,  163 

Jerusalem,  15,  20,  40,  45,  55,  105,  229  f., 

235,  243,  248,  255  ff.,  262,  270 
Jerusalem  Union,  The,  259  ff. 
Jessup,  H.  H.,  213 
Jessup,  Samuel,  213 
Jesuits,  The,  52f.,  90  f.,  134,  162,  225, 

248,  297,  385 
Jetter,  J.  A.,  97 
Jewett,  294 
Jews,  The,  230  f.,  392;  missions  among, 

3i8f.,  323,  326f.,  333,390-400;  see 

also  Falasha 
Jewish  Refugees'  Aid  Society,  The,  255 
Jezreel,  23 
Jifna,  257 

John,  Bishop  of  Ephesus,  42 
John,  Negus,  374  f.,  385,  387 
John  of  Seville,  404 
Jowett,  W.,  380 
Julamerk,  42,  293 
Junieh,  217 

Kadesia,  battle  of,  279 

Kadirija — see  Dervish  Orders 

Kafr  Shima,  207 

Kaisarieh,  140 

Kaiserswerth       Deaconesses'      Homes, 

149  f.,  162,  202,  217,  267-270,  357 
Kalopothakes,  166 
Kalyub,  356 
Kana,  194 

Kannobin,  Monastery  of,  48 
Karabagh,  99 
Karass,  98 
Kasa,  373 
Kasala,  385 

Kasim  Beg,  Alexander,  I02 
Kasvin,  185,  318 
Kathershian,  Yinyis,  14I 
Katshadurian,  119 
Kenneh,  46 
Kerak,  249,  252 
Kerbela,  164,  286 
Kermanshah,  326 
Kesrwan,  47,  223 
Keswick  Conference,  The,  250 
Khakhams,  The,  393 
Kharaba,  206 
Kharabeh,  207 
Kharput,   56,   74,    116,   121,    123,  125, 

131.  ^33>  135.  140,  156  f.,  159 


Index 


429 


Khartum,  354  f.,  365  f.,  369 

Khasfin,  207 

Khoi,  150,  176 

Khorasan,  279 

King,  Jonas,  166,  186 

Kirjatein,  208 

Kirman,  330,  332  f. 

Kismayn,  390 

Kitchener,  Lord,  367 

Klein,  A.  F.,  245,  247,  360 

Kobula,  384 

Koehler,  W.,  47 

Koeller,  173,  175  f. 

Komants,  The,  376 

Konia,  163 

Koptic     Church,     The — see      Oriental 

Churches 
Kopts,  The,  45  f.,  63  f.,  341  f.,  346-351 
Koraishite  Khahfate,  29,  36 
Koran,  Tiie,  26,  28,  78  f.,  81,  84  f.,  loi 

288,33s;  quoted,  25,59,  172 
Koreish,  The,  280 
Koritza,  170 
Korpey,  146 
Kossova,  104 

Kotchhannes,  41,  293,  309  f. 
Kozle,  328 

Krapf,  354  f.,  378  f.,  381  f.,  386,  408 
Krose,  H.  A.,  53 
Kruse,  W.,  96 
Kugler,  380,  408 
Kuifun,  206 
Kulluko,  388 
Kumm,  W.  W.,  357 
Kunama,  The,  386,  388 
Kunawat,  206 
Kurdistan,    24,^62,    94,    105,   1 16,  292, 

300,  309 
Kurds,  The,  24,  28,  43,  45,   108,  136, 

138,    152 f.,    155,    161,   279,  293,  307, 

3iof.,  3isf.,  32sf. 
Kus,  346,  352 
Kuweit,  277 

La  Grange,  Miss  Harriet,  222 

Labaree,  Benjamin,  315  f.,  403,  406 

Lahiteh,  206 

Lake,  General,  247  f.,  358 

Lang,  Johann  Jacob,  99 

Lansing,  J.  G.,  276,  352 

Larissa,  166 

Larnaka,  210 

Latakia,  184 

Latrun,  55 

Lazarists,  The,  53,  55,  297,  308 

Le  Quien,  47 


Lebanon,  The,  47  f.,  51,  62,  79,  105, 
180,  182,  200,  224 

Lebanon  station.  The,  213 

Leeves,  H.  D.,  402 

Leger,  Anton,  90 

Lejah,  The,  206 

Lemal,  145 

Leo  XIII,  52 

Lepers,  Work  among,  269  f. 

Lepsius,  Johannes,  84,  139,  149  f.,  158 

Lepsius  Society,  The,  161 

Lethaby,  249 

Leucosia,  167,  210 

Lieder,  J.  R.  T.,  96  f.,  344,  382 

Literature,  Christian,  publication  and 
distribution  of,  80,  95,  98  f.,  108  ff., 
I35>  169  f.,  185,  1S7,  190,  215  f.,  235, 
296,  307.  319,  331.  347  f-.  351.356, 
361,  409  ;  see  also  Colportage,  Beirut 
Mission  Press,  Bible  Translations 

Lobdell,  294 

Loftcha,  169 

Lohmann,  150,  158 

Lohraann  Society,  The,  l6l 

London  Jewish  Society,  236  f.,  242, 
254ff.,  383-386,  396,  398 ff. 

Long,  A.,  170,  407 

Lotka,  J.,  399 

Lucaris,  Cyril,  89  ff, 

Ludolf,  Jr.,  92 

Ludolf,  Hiob,  92 

Luristan,  334 

Lurs,  The,  279 

Lutheran  Mission  in  Persia,  308 

Liittke,  M.,  337 

Luweiz,  Convent  of,  48 

Luxor,  349,  352  f. 

Lydda,  40,  248,  259 

Lyde,  S.,  209 

McCaul,  394 
McCheyne,  205 
Mackay,  Alexander,  275 
MacLean,  A.  M.,  296 
Maclean,  A.  F.,  310 
Macedonia,  37,  39,  104,  119,  169 
Macedonians,  The,  23 
Magdala,  374,  384 
Mahalla,  274 

Maharag,  Monastery  of,  342 
Mahdi,  The,  27,  287,  366 
Mahdi  risings,  27,  364,  366 
Mahdists,  The,  375,  385 
Mahmud  Effendi,  173,  175 
Mahmud  II,  37 
Major,  162 


430 


Index 


Maku,  289 

Malatia  (Malatiyeh),  140,  148 

Malgara,  Mission  of,  50 

Malta,  22,  95,  106,   114,  164,  185,  189, 

239 

Mamelukes,  The,  342,  364 

Mamuret  el  Aziz,  56,  105 

Mansura,  346 

Mar  Shimun,  Patriarch,  309 

Mar  Yonan,  311 

Marash,  115,  126,  133,  I40f,,  157  f., 
161  ff. 

Mardin,  43,  51,  I17,  126,  133,  157 

Margawar,  304 

Margoliouth,  29 

Marno,  389 

Maron,  48 

Maronite  Patriarch,  The,  187  f. 

Maronites,  The,  48,  53,  64,  1 1 1,  i8i,  190, 
192  f.,  198  f.,  200,  204,  223,  229,  264  f. 

Marsh,  294 

Marsovan,  56,  74,  117,  122,  125,  128, 
131,  135.  140,  145.  157.  162 

Martyn,  Henry,  93  f.,  117,  319,  329.413 

Maskat,  273-277 

Mason  Memorial  Hospital,  The,  277 

Massowa,  354,  372,  374,  386 

Matteos,  Patriarch,  iii,  119 

Maulawiya — see  Dervish  Orders 

Maule,  Fox,  208 

Mazandaran,  290 

Mecca,  20,  28  f.,  272,  359 

Mechitarists,  The,  106 

Medical  work,  80,  92;  in  Abyssinia, 
386  f. ;  in  Arabia,  274,  277  ;  in  Egypt, 
352  f.,  357  f.,  360  f.;  in  Persia,  307, 
320  ff.,  330  f.;  in  Syria  and  Palestine, 
203  f.,  206,  251  ff.,  255-258,  268  f. ;  in 
Tm-key  and  Armenia,  133,  157  ff.,  161- 
164 

Medina,  20,  272,  359 

Medinet  el  Fayum,  346,  352 

Mediterranean  Mission,  The,  94-97 

Megerdich,  162 

Melchites,  The — see  Oriental  Churches 

Meluk,  370 

Melwal,  370 

Menama,  276 

Mendez,  Alfonso,  53 

Menelik,  375 

Mensa,  The,  287  f. 

Meroe,  Kingdom  of,  363 

Merriam,  W.  W.,  169 

Mesereh,  56,  135,  158,  161 

Meshaka,  208 

Meshhed,  319 


Mesopotamia,  24,  43,  99,  105,  Ii6f.,  163, 

282 
Metameh,  355,  385 
Metamineh,  375 

Metawileh,  The,  185,  200,  229,  281 
Methodist  Missions,  166  f.,  170,  315 
Meyer,  J.,  408 
Michaelis,  Johannes,  92 
Mildmay  Deaconesses,  256 
Minyah,  46 

Mirza  Faruch,  10 1  f.,  403 
Mirza  Ibrahim,  328 
Mirza  Yahya,  290  f. 
Mitrovitza,  170 
Mofi,  390 

MoUah  Husein,  287 
Mollah  Muhammad  Ali,  289  f. 
Mollah  Muhammad  Ali  of  Zangin,  289 
Monastery  of  the  Cross,  64 
Monastir,  104,  169,  397 
Monkullo,  387  f. 
Monophysite     Churches  —  see    Oriental 

Churches 
Monophysitism,  42  f.,  57 
Moravian  Church,  92 
Morgan,  Miss,  257 
Morocco,  19,  23,  33,  35 
Morris,  Dr.,  274 

Mosul,  41,  43,  105,  Ii6f.,  163,  309,  317 
Mott,  Mentor,  203 
Mount  Athos,  65 
Mount  Kaneesh,  217 
Mount  of  Olives,  270 
Muhammad  (The  Prophet),  24  f.,  35,  59, 

81  f.,  85,  loi,  271,  280 
Muhammad  II,  37,  59 
Muhammad  Achmed,  Sheikh,  366 
Muhammad  Ali   (ruler  of  Egypt),  236, 

238,  337  f-.  365 
Muhammad  Ali  Mirza,  Shah,  334 
Muhammad  el  Habib,  182 
Muhammad  Ibn  el  Wahhab,  273 
Muhammadan  World,  The,  17-36;  geo- 
graphical limits  of,  17  ;  moral  condi- 
tion   of,   27  f. ;   political   authority  in, 
22;    political   unrest   in,   36;   popula- 
tion, 18,  19 
Muhammadanism — see  Islam 
Muhammadans,  The,  conference  of  mis- 
sionaries among,  in  Cairo,  81,  84,  278, 
362  f. ;  missions  among,  1 1,  72  f.,  77  ff., 
80,  92,  94,  97,  99  f.,  413  f. ;  in  Arabia, 
271-278;  in  Bagdad,  164;  in  Egypt, 
78 f.,    351  f-,   356,   360 ff.;    in  Persia, 
317,  327,  333;  in  Syria  and  Palestine, 
247,  253  f.;  in  Turkey,  171-176,  180  j 


Index 


431 


difficulties  of,  78  ff.,  230,  239,  276  f., 
317  f. ;  methods  of,  81,  83-88 

Miihleisen,  381 

Muir,  William,  84 

Munzinger,  386 

Murad,  61,  91 

Musa  Kasim,  182 

Mush,  139,  142,  150  f. 

Mustafa  Fazil  Pasha,  24 

Muzaffar  ed  Din,  334 

Nablus,  240,  243,  248,  252,  257 

Nakheileh,  350 

Napier,  Sir  Robert,  374,  384 

Nasarieh,  277 

Nasirud  Din,  290 

Nazareth,  40,  240,  243  f.,  249,  258 

Nebk,  208 

Nejd,  The,  105 

Nejef,  164 

Nestorian      Church  —  see     Oriental 

Churches 
Nestorians,  The,  42,  64,  117,  279,  292- 

298,    304,    310-314,    340;     Mountain 
;    Nestorians,  The,  1 16,  163,  292  f.,  300, 

307.  309. 316 
Nestorius,  40 
Newman,  C.  S.,  396 
Newton,  Miss,  257 
Nicanor,  57 
Nicholas  I,  102 
Nicolayson,  J.,  186,  236 
Nicomedia,  105,  114,  121 
Nineveh,  13;  see  also  Mosul 
Noeldeke,  Theodor,  296 
North  African  Mission,  The,  356 
Nubia,  363  f. 
Nubians,  The,  364  f. 
Nuehr,  The,  370 
Nurallah  Bey,  292 
Nusairiyeh,  The,  24,  8 1,  1 84,  209,  229, 

281 
Nylandt,  355 

Obeid  Allah,  307 
Oertsen,  Detlev  von,  326,  405 
Oman,  273  f. 

Omar,  Khalif,  26,  59,  61,  183 
Omar  Khayyam,  285 
Omayyads,  The,  272,  280 
Omdurman,  367 
Onesimus,  389 
Ordu,  166 

Orientmission,  The,  161,  176,  315,  326 

Oriental  Churches,  The,  37,  67-71,  76, 

112,    114;    attempts    at    reform    in, 


67,  70-76,  92,  94 f.,  99,  III,  167,  189, 
229,  233  f.,  246,  299,  303  f.,  308,  415  ; 
formation  of  Protestant  congregations 
among,  69,  74fr.,  90  f.,  Ii3f.,  119, 
134,  158,  227  f.,  240  f.,  245,  267  f., 
299,  345.  348,  388,  415 

1.  Monophysite  Churches,  63,  71  ; 
Abyssinian  Church,  46,  65,  371, 
375>  387  ;  Gregorians  (Arme- 
nians), 43,46,  58  f.,  63,  66,  io2f., 
132,  134,  156,  158  f.,  162;  Jaco- 
bites, 43,  46,  50,  64,  117,  122,  181, 
340 ;  Koptic  Church,  39,  43,  45  f., 
58,  63,  65,  342  f,  344,  375 

2.  Nestorian  Church,  The,  40  f.,  46, 
58,7lf.,  304,310-314 

3.  "  Orthodox  "  Churches  :  Greek 
Orthodox  Church,  37-40,  45  f., 
64,  68,  104  f.,  162,  225  f.,  340  J 
autonomous  National  Churches 
in  Bulgaria,  38,  50,  167;  in 
Cyprus,  38 ;  in  Greece,  37  f.,  50, 
165  ff.,  415;  in  Hungary,  38; 
in  Montenegro,  22,  38 ;  in  Rou- 
mania,  38;  in  Russia,  37,  56  ff., 
311-314;  in  Servia,  38,  73. 

4.  Roman  Catholic  Churches=i: 
Uniate  Churches=Churches  of 
the  Oriental  Rites :  Chaldeans= 
Uniate  Nestorians,  41,  51,  53f. ; 
Maronites,  47,  50,  54  ;  Melchites, 
50,  53  f.,  181,  199  f.;  Latin  rite, 
49 ;  Graeco-Roumanian  rite,  49  ; 
Graeco-Ruthenian  rite,  49  ;  Uniate 
Abyssinians,  53;  Uniate  Arme- 
nians, 50-54;  Uniate  Bulgarians, 
50;  Uniate  Greeks,  50;  Uniate 
Jacobites,  50,  53  f. ;  Uniate  Kopts, 
49,  52;  Uniate  Servians,  50. 

Oriental  Christians,  Position  of  under 
Turkish  rule,  58-63,  227 ;  relation 
between  Protestants  and  non-Prot- 
estants, 69  f,  75,  Il2f.,  156,  158  f., 
225,313 

Oriental  rites.  Churches  of  the — see 
Oriental  Churches 

Origen,  37 

Orphanages,  156,  162,  260,  315 

Osmanli  Dynasty,  35 

Othman,  183 

Ottoman  Empire — see  Turkish  Em- 
pire 

Oussani,  41 

Pachomius,  342 

Palestine,  37,  57,  81,  229-270 


432 


Index 


Palestine  and  Lebanon  Nurses'  Mission, 
Tiie,  206 

Palgrave,  William  Gifford,  28 

Palmer,  262 

Panislamism,  The  ideal  of,  35  f,,  359  f., 
414 

Papizian,  Ohannes,  145 

Parry,  O.  H.,  310 

Parsees,  The,  332 

Parsegh,  102 

Parsons,  Levi,  185,  235 

Passionists,  The,  55 

Patras,  166  f. 

Patterson,  Dr.,  256 

Patriarch  of  Aghtamar,  45  ;  of  Alex- 
andria, 38  ff.,  57, 64 ;  of  Antioch,  38  ff., 
43»  57»  64;  of  Constantinople 
(Armenian),  45  ;  of  Constantinople 
(Orthodox),  37  ff. ;  of  Jerusalem  (Ar- 
menian), 45 ;  of  Jerusalem  (Ortho- 
dox), 39  f. ;  of  Mardin,   5 1 ;   of  Sis, 

45 
Paul  of  Thebes,  342 
Paul,  C,  371,  383 
Pera,  120 

Pera  Johannes,  308 
Peramos,  50 

Perkins,  Justin,  294  ff.,  301,  303,  406 
Persia,    11,    17,   19,  23,  41,  44,  58,  79, 

99  f.,  176,  279-336;  missions  in,  294- 

336 
Persian  influence  on  Islam,  280-294 
Persian  Parliament,  The,  334  ff. 
Peshtimaljan,  107 
Pfander,  Karl   Gottlieb,   100  ff,,   173  ff., 

351.403 

Pfeifer,  106 

Pflanz,  257 

Philip,  Dr.,  398 

Philippopolis,  50,  53,  168  ff.,  175 

Pinkerton,  350 

Pius  IX,  55 

Plymouth  Brethren,  The,  315,  350 

Pobedonoszeff,  154 

Poitiers,  21 

Port  Said,  409 

Port  Sudan,  369 

Post,  Dr.,  217 

Prretorius,  405 

Preparandi  Institute,  The,  244,  252 

Presbyterians,  American,  212;  Cana- 
dian, 398;  Northern,  163,  400 ;  in 
Persia,  303-308;  in  Syria,  212-223; 
Reformed  (Covenanters),  208-21 1; 
Southern,  166,  170;  see  also  United 
Presbyterians 


Presbyteries,    formation    of,   in    Egypt, 

353;  in  Syria,  215 
Priests  of  the  Heart  of  Jesus,  55 
Prime,  Ed.  G.,  106 
Prishtina,  170 
Pritchet,  249 
Procter,  Miss  Louisa,  206 

Rahmat  Allah,  ioi 

Ramallah,  240,  257 

Ramleh,  40,  240,  248 

Ras  el  Meri,  204 

Reformed  Nestorian  Church,  The,  304, 
312 

Reid,  168 

Reshid  Pasha,  218 

Resht,  318,  320 

Rhea,  294 

Richardson,  165 

Riggs,  Edward,  no 

Riggs,  Elias,  109  f.,  133,  170,  401, 406  f. 

Riley,  310 

Robert  College,  74,  129  ff.,  157,  170 

Roman  Catholic  Missions,  15,  46-56, 
67  f.,  74,  117,  135,  163,  211  f.,  225, 
295.  317.  332,  381,  390,  414 

Rosecrucian  Sisters,  The,  55 

Rosen,  von,  102 

Roumania,  19,  37  f.,  73,  92 

Rumelia,  169 

Rumi  Melleti,  37 

Russian  Bible  Society,  The,  91,  106, 
409 

Russian  Church — see  Oriental  Churches 

Russian  Palestine  Association,  The,  333 

Russian  pilgrims  in  Palestine,  233 

Russian  policy  in  the  Near  East,  17,  19, 
22,  36,  39,  44,  50,  57  f.,  92,  102,  118, 
135.  »37»  149,  153  ff-.  168,  226,  233 

Russo-Japanese  War,  The,  314 

Russo-Turkish  War,  The,  167 

Rustchuk,  50,  169 

Ruthenians,  The,  37 

Sabagadis,  378,  380 

Sabbatists,  The,  258 

Sacy,  Silvestre  de,  184 

Sadad,  43 

Sadi,  282 

Safdar  Ali,  10 1 

Safed,  207,  230,  239,  256,  409 

Safita,  195 

Sahela  Selassie,  381 

Said  Pasha,  338,  345  f.,  398 

St.  Crischona  Mission  House,  243,  382 

St.  George's  Hospital,  Beirut,  197 


Index 


433 


St.     John,    German     Hospital    of     the 

Knights  of,  i86,  202,  217 
St.  Joseph's  University,  56 
St.  Maron,  Monastery  of,  47 
St.  Paul's  College,  157 
Salesians  of  Dom  Bosco,  The,  55 
Salmas,  304,  318 
Salomo,  Alexander,  239 
Salonica,   166,  169  f.,  392,  395,  397,  409 
Samakov,  169  f. 
San  Stephano,  Peace  of,  136 
Sana,  105 

Sandrezky,  Dr.,  245,  269 
Sanussi,  2;^ 
Sanussiyah  (Senussi),  The — see  Dervish 

Orders 
Sarki  Hambarzumoff,  103 
Sassanides,  The,  141,  279 
Sassun,  139,  144 
Saud,  273 
Schauffler,  William  Gottlieb,  107,  396  f., 

401,  407 
Scheele,  Bishop,  260 
Schick,  Baurat,  262 
Schlienz,  C.  F.,  95,  97 
Schlotthauer,  347,  355 
Schneller,  Ludvvig,  52,  55,  259,  262-267 
Schneller,  Theodor,  265 
Scio,  176 
Scios,  165 
Scottish     Missions    among    the     Jews, 

394,   396-399 ;    in  Abyssinia,  383  f  ; 

in   Egypt,    345  ;   in    Persia,    319 ;   in 

Syria  and  Palestine,  205,  244,  256 
Scottish  National  Bible  Society,  409 
Scrimgeour,  Dr.,  258 
Scutari,  133,  157 
Sebastiani,  L.,  403 
Self  support,  121,  160,  228,  305 
Selim  Effendi  Williams,  173,  175 
Sell,  184,  286 
Sephardim,  The,  392  f. 
Servia,  19,  21,  23,  37  f ,  73,  169  f. 
Seyyid  Kasim,  286 
Sharon,  231 

Shattuck,  Miss  Corinna,  150 
Shebin  el  Kanatr,  356 
Shebin  el  Kom,  356 
Shedd,  294 
Shefa  Amr,  249 
Sheikh  Othman,  273 
Sheikh  Tebersi,  290 
Shemacha,  99,  102  f. 
Shepard,  W.,  157 
Sherif  of  Mecca,  The,  36 
Sheverine,  319 


Shiites,  The,  35,  164,  182,  184,  280  f., 
286  {.,  289,  326 

Shimon,  41 

Shiraz,  93,  319,  330,  334,  403 

Shoa,  372,  381,  388 

Shuma  Negus,  388 

Shumla,  168 

Shusha,  99,  102,  155 

Shuweifat,  206 

Shuweir,  205,  213 

Sidon,  194,  203,  213,  222 

Sidon  Seminary  for  Girls,  The,  222 

Silbernagel,  47 

Simen,  377 

Sinaitic  Peninsula,  The,  29,  271,  360 

Sis,  45 

Sisters  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  52 

Sisters  of  Mercy,  52 

Sisters  of  Nazareth,  55 

Sisters  of  St.  Joseph,  55 

Sisters  of  St.  Vincent,  55 

Sisters  of  Zion,  55 

Sistowa,  168 

Sivas,  116,  133,  135,  140,  144,  157  f., 
162 

Skene,  210 

Slave  trade.  The,  33,  364-367 

Slavs,  The,  37,  39,  57 

Smith,  Azariah,  122 

Smith,  Eli,  41,  106,  190,  196  f,  295,404 

Smith,  Dr.  Mary,  321 

Smith,  Miss  Wordsworth,  206 

Smyrna,  50,  53,  96,  110,  114,  132,  157, 
162,  165  ff.,  398 

Sobieski,  John,  21 

Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowl- 
edge, The,  309 

Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel, 
173,  175,  258,  309 

Sofia,  50,  169  f. 

Somali,  The,  337,  390 

Somerset,  Lady,  145 

Sonegg,  Freiherr  Hans  Ungnad  von,  89 

Sor,  105 

Souchbulak,  161,  316,  326,  399 

Sparta,  165 

Spence,  D.  B.,  408 

Spillenaar,  356 

Spittler,  Father,  261,  354  f.,  382 

Staiger,  383 

Stamboul,  20,  90,  157,  162,  178 

Stephan  III,  Patriarch,  III 

Sterling,  Canon,  252 

Stern,  H.  A.,  377,  383 

Stileman,  H.,  333 

Stock,  235,  246 


434 


Index 


Stoddard,  294,  296,  302 

Stone,  Miss  Ellen,  169 

Stratford  Canning  de  Redcliff,  Lord,  1 1 3, 

172 
Strauss,  F.  A.,  259 
Strait,  47,  52 
Stuart,  Bishop,  276,  333 
Suakim,  360,  367 

Sudan,  Tiie,  18  f.,  22,  33,  363-371,  409 
Sudan  Pioneer  Mission,  The,  357 
Sueidiye,  211 
Suez,  356 
Suez  Canal,  338  f. 
Sufism,  281-286 
Sulduz,  304 
Sullaka,  Johannes,  5 1 
Sunna,  The,  26,  281 
Sunnites,  The,  281 
Susneus,  Negus,  53 
Sutton,  H,  M.,  164 
Swedish   Evangelical  National  Society, 

The,  161 
Swedish  Missions,  260,  314 
Swedish  National  Mission,  The,  386-390 
Swiss  Aid  Association,  The,  160 
Syra,  96 
Syria,  24,  37.  43-  57.  62  f.,  69,  81,  91, 

105,  181-229,  264 
Syriac   language.  The,  42,   295  f.,   301, 

307 

Syrian  Protestant  College,  74,  186,  202, 
218-221,  225 

Syrian  Protestant  Orphanage  in  Jerusa- 
lem, 149,  258,  261-267 

Tabitha  Mission,  The,  257 

Tabriz,  94,  312,  317  ff.,  321,  324  f.,  335 

Tadem,  145 

Tais,  105 

Tajura,  381 

Talitha  Cumi,  268 

Tanta,  35  2  f. 

Tarsus,  74,  157,  163 

Tartars,  The,  98  f.,  155 

Tayeleny,  388  f. 

Taylor,  Miss,  207 

Teheran,  94,  317-321,  323  f.,  3';6,  328, 

334  f-.  399 
Templars,  The,  234,  261 
Temple  colonies,  234 
Tendur,  386 
Tergawar,  304 
Tewfik  College,  343 
Tevvfik  Pasha,  339 
Theodore  II,  Negus,  355,  373  f.,  382  ff., 

386 


Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  40 

Thompson,  missionary  in  Jerusalem,  257 

Thompson,  Bowen,  203 

Thompson,  Mrs.,  203 

Thomson,  Wm.  M.,  198 

Thornton,  Douglas,  361  f. 

Thrace,  104,  169 

Tiary,  300 

Tiberias,  230,  256,  409 

Tiflis,  161,  312 

Tigr6,  378,  381,  388 

Timbuctoo,  33 

Tisdall,  W,  St.  Clair,  331,  405 

Tiyaniyah — see  Dervish  Orders 

Tokat,  56,  93,  117,  162 

Tomory,  A.,  396 

Torrance,  Dr.,  256 

Transcaucasia,  Russian,  97,  152-155 

Trappists,  The,  55 

Trebizond,  1146'.,  140  f.,  296 

Trip,  208 

Tripoli  (country  in  Africa),  19,  24,  33  f. 

Tripoli  (town  in  Syria),  47,  184,  186, 
194,  203,  213,  217,  224 

Tripoli  Girls'  School,  The,  222 

Tristram,  Canon,  199,  244 

Turkey,  17,  19,  22  f.,  28,  37  f.,  44,  65, 
68,  104  f.,  217;  Central  Turkey  Mis- 
sion, 116,  126;  East  Turkey  Mission, 
II 6 f.,  126;  West  Turkey  Mission, 
117,  125 

Turkish  Empire,  24,  34  ff.,  39,  75,  230 

Turkish  Constitution,  The,  153,  176-180 

Turkish  language,  The,  39,  45,  63,  95, 
161 

Turkish  Missions'  Aid  Society,  The,  118 

Turks,  The,  23,  104,  131,  138,  152,  230; 
missions  among,  164,  171- 1 76 

Tyre,  47,  203  f. 

Ube,  378,  380  f. 
Ubeidallah,  183 
United  Presbyterian  Missions  among  the 

Jews,    390;    in    Damascus,    207;    in 

Egypt,    75  f-.    344-354.   35^;    in  the 

Egyptian  Sudan,  367,  369  f. 
Unyoro,  365 
Urfa,   102,   105,  115,  140,  146,  150,  156, 

158,  176 
Urumiah    (Urmia)    41,    II4,    1 16,    150, 

292,  297,  302-317,  319,  321,  335,  399 

Van,  41,  45,   105,  116,   139  f.,  150  f., 

156  f.,  159  f.,  317 
Van  Dyck,  C,  V.  A,,  196,  198,  217,  404 
Vartan,  Dr.,  258 


Index 


435 


Victoria   Hospital,  The,   in  Cairo,  208, 

357  f- 
Vienna,  Siege  of,  21 

WadAI,  Sultan  of,  33 
Wadi  Halfe,  369 

Wahabis  (Wahabites),  The,  27,  35 
Wahhab  Empire,  The,  273 
Wahl,  309 
Wahuma,  The,  337 
Waldmeyer,  Theophilus,  204,  383 
Warka,  188 
Warneck,  Johannes,  87 
Wartabet,  Jacob,  187 
Washburn,  George,  131 
Watson,  A.,  344,  35  ^ 
Watson,  C.  R.,  344 
Watussi,  The,  337 
Wazirabad,  308 
Weakley,  R.  H.,  lOl,  40I 
Welte,  47 
Werner,  47 
West,  Henry,  133  f. 
West,  Miss,  162 

Western  Persia  Mission,  The,  317 
Westminster,  Duke  of,  149 
Westminster  Hospital,  The,  307 
Wetzer,  47 

Whately,  Miss  Mary,  358 
White  Fathers,  The,  55 
William  of  Tyre,  48 
Williams,  Fenwick,  136 
Williams,  Miss  Juliana,  206 
Wilson,  C.  T.,  247,  254 
Wilson,  John,  207 
Wingate,  Sir  Reginald,  368 
Winquist,  408 
Wishard,  J.  G.,  321 
Wishard,  Luther,  130 
Witteween,  355 
Wolda  Michael,  378 
Wolters,  Theodore  Friedrich,  245,  253 
Women's  Board,  The,  169 
Women's  work,  27,  80,  88 ;  in  Arabia, 
277  f. ;  in  Egypt,  350,  352;  in  Persia, 


326  f.,  332  f. ;  in  Syria  and  Palestine, 
204,  250  f. ;  see  also  Educational 
Work 

Wood,  Mrs.  George,  222 

Worsley,  T.  H.,  206 

Xavier,  Francis,  93 
Xenophon,  136 

Yates,  Holt,  211 

Yaure  Abraham,  308 

Yemen,  24,  272 

Yezd,  291,  319,  330-333 

Yezides,  The,  185 

Yiddish  language.  The,  393 

Yonti,  390 

Young,  Dr.,  274 

Young,  C.  G.,  118 

Young,  John,  27 

Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  1 30 

Yusuf  Asir,  Sheikh,  197 

Young  Kopts,  The,  343 

Young  Turks,  The,  177-180 

Zagazig,  352 

Zahleh,  203,  213 

Zalanes,  The,  376 

Zangin,  290 

Zaremba,  Felician,  99,  403 

Zazega,  387 

Zeile,  389 

Zeitun,  115,  118,  135 

Zerrin  Taj,  289 

Zerweck,  328  f, 

Zeller,  Johannes,  96,  244 

Ziemendorf,  T.  H.,  357 

Zimmies,  The,  60,  135.  ^37 

Zionist  movement.  The,  231  f. 

Zoar,  202 

Zohrab,  Dr.,  406 

Zoroaster,  292 

Zoroastrianism,  41 

Zoroastrians,  The,  279 

Zwemer,  Peter,  278 

Zwemer,  S.  M,,  276,  278,  411 


Theological  Semmary-Speer 


1    1012  01105  6621 


DEMCO  38-297 


